Change Your Ending
by rjasey
Summary: What would you do if George Weasley told you he knew your future and he wanted to change it?
1. You're My Favorite Character

"While today being 'well read' is a virtue lauded by scholars and those we deem to be the most intelligent, in the 18th century it was regarded as dangerous. Those who allowed themselves to be consumed by the dreaded novel were considered to have 'reading fever' 'reading rage' or even 'reading addiction'."

Elizabeth stared at her computer, trying to think of a way to expound upon this subject enough to write an entire paper. Truth be told, she wanted to be in the thralls of 'reading fever' right now rather than writing her senior thesis. She was nearly there, she was so close to graduating she could almost taste it, but she still had a month and this monster of a paper to go.

"I'm headed to the library." Her roommate, Leah, popped her head into Elizabeth's room. She saw Elizabeth sitting with her chin in her hand, looking a bit frazzled. "Still stuck on the opening paragraph?" Elizabeth nodded. "Well, once you have that, the rest of the paper will come."

"I know, but I have to get it right or the rest of the paper will be garbage."

"You have lots of time to work on it. I can't believe you started so early." Elizabeth grinned. Leah was right to be surprised. Elizabeth had perfected the art of writing a paper the night before it was due and pulling in fantastic grades. But this was one paper that she knew she had to do properly and actually spend some real time on.

"Will you be studying or will Ethan be meeting you there?" Elizabeth asked her. Ethan was Leah's boyfriend. They hadn't been seeing each other long, but Leah was already pretty invested. Leah winked.

Elizabeth grinned at her and Leah headed out the door. Elizabeth turned to her computer again. She stared at the screen for fifteen minutes. She looked through her notes. She read one of the articles she was planning to use. Then she gave up.

"Leah's right, I have plenty of time. Maybe the best way to get ideas about reading rage is to experience it myself." She tried to convince herself that it was okay to give up for now. She sidestepped away from her desk and eyed her bookshelf slyly as though she was being watched and the person watching her was giving her a disapproving look.

"Don't look at me that way." She said, talking to her imaginary critic. "I promise to pick one that's professor approved." That being said, she reached for _As I Lay Dying_ rather than something that was more like mind candy, that was entertaining but had less substance. She held up the book for all to see and then frowned. "I can see that you're going to disapprove no matter what, so I'm just going to ignore you." And with that she flung herself on to her bed and began to read.

She had only read a few pages when she heard a knock on the door. She looked up, a little irritated that she was being interrupted. She wasn't expecting anyone, her boyfriend, Matt, had a late class and most of the rest of her friends were doing what she was supposed to be doing, studying. She sat still hoping that whomever it was would go away, but a second knock came. She groaned and got up to answer the door.

She grumbled to herself on the way to the door. "Is this any way to treat a college student just weeks away from finals? Some serious studying could (should) be going on in here." She laughed at her self as she saw the irony of her irritation and opened the door.

It was someone she had never met before, and yet… Elizabeth and the stranger stared at each other silently for a moment. The stranger was looking her over, his eyebrow raised in surprise. Elizabeth gaped at the man who looked completely familiar though she had never seen him before. The stranger was the living embodiment of what she had imagined one of her favorite book characters to be, though perhaps a little older, and with one big exception. He had short red hair, was tall and had warm brown eyes and freckles. And he was handsome, very handsome. She knew that it couldn't be him, he was a fictional character. He wasn't real except in the imagination of every child, and many adults, around the world. And even if he did exist, there was no way that he would look exactly like Elizabeth had imagined.

The stranger smiled as Elizabeth continued to stare. She caught herself and smiled back. He continued to stare and wasn't the least bit self-conscious about it.

"Can I help you?" She asked him.

"Actually, I'm here to help you." Ah, a British accent. Now all he needed was a wand and he would be perfect. Her imagination ran wild for just a second and then she snapped herself back to reality and realized what he had just said.

"I'm sorry?" What could a perfect stranger possibly want to help her with?

"You're my favorite character in a book I've come to appreciate, but I hate the way it ended for you. I'm here to see if we can change that." She gaped at him.

"What?" What was he talking about? Was this some sort of frat pledge? Was he selling something? Was he drunk? She looked around trying to see if some of his buddies were hiding around the corner laughing their butts off, but she didn't see anyone.

"What are you looking for?" He asked, looking around too.

"The other people who are in on the joke."

"What joke?"

"Whatever you're trying to pull on me, well, it's not a good time. I'm supposed to be writing a paper. There are a couple of girls down the hall who would think this is hilarious, though." She made as if to close the door, but he put his hand to the door and stopped her.

"I'm sorry, Elizabeth, I probably should have put it a little more delicately. This must be a little hard to believe." She laughed. Surely he hadn't thought she was stupid enough to believe such a story. She wondered if she should be offended that he thought this ridiculousness was going to work for even a second.

"It's not just a little hard; no one would believe you. Did Matt put you up to this? Is that how you know my name?" If it was Matt, she was going to have a few words with him. He knew that she wasn't fool enough to believe this.

"Your boyfriend? No, we've never met."

"Then how do you know he's my boyfriend?" Matt should have found someone who wasn't going to give him away so easily. "You can tell him that this was a good try, but he should have picked a time when I wasn't so busy. I don't have time to play along right now."

"Are you sure about that? You don't finish your paper for a couple of weeks, which suggests that you aren't working terribly hard right now." He grinned at her mischievously. How did he know that? And why did he think it was so funny that she claimed to be working? "Surely you can spare a little time."

"What are you talking about? I'm going to finish that paper this week so that I can edit and work out the weak spots." She said argued.

"Are you?" He said, raising that eyebrow again. She flushed.

"Yes." She said firmly, making up her mind then and there to finish it before the week's end, just to spite this stranger. To her surprise, he laughed.

"This is just too much fun. You're just as I imagined you, but it's so much better in person." Was he making fun of her? "May I come in?" He asked her.

"I don't think that's a very good idea. I still don't know what you're really after and I don't trust you, despite the smooth accent. Is that real, by the way, or is that part of the act?"

"It's as real as yours." He countered, grinning. She grinned back, not being able to help herself. He sounded crazy, but he was very charming.

"Touché."

"Well, if you're unwilling to let me in now, I'll have to come back another time. Good luck with your paper." He walked down the hall with Elizabeth staring after him. Perhaps it hadn't been Matt after all, he wouldn't have gone to all this trouble just to play a joke on her. After he was out of sight, she closed the door, thinking what a strange conversation that had been, and instead of returning to her book, she went back to the computer and put in a few good hours on her paper.

Elizabeth didn't expect to see the stranger again, she felt like she had been firm enough in letting him know his little joke wasn't going to get anywhere with her. So, she was surprised to see him the next day as she and Leah were leaving the library. Leah was off to her next class and Elizabeth was on her way to find something to eat. The stranger appeared beside her as soon as Leah was out of sight.

"Hello again." He greeted her, clearly happy to see her, and enjoying the look of surprise on her face.

"It's you." Elizabeth said a bit miffed. How had he found her?

"Yes, I told you I would be back. Are you ready to talk to me yet?" He asked her as though it was inevitable that she was going to believe his story. He hadn't taken her obvious disbelief as real, which made her wonder if there wasn't something more serious behind this joke.

"I don't believe we have anything to talk about, perfect stranger who's name I don't even know."

"I beg your pardon. I'm George." He said it so naturally. Elizabeth stopped walking and looked at him.

"You can't be serious." Elizabeth said, looking incredulous. George looked surprised by her reaction.

"What? Why not?" He was very, very good. His reactions were all so natural that she wondered how long he had been doing this. Perhaps he was some sort of professional impersonator and someone had really put a lot of time and money into tricking her. Maybe the real joke wasn't the story he had told her about changing her story, but the very fact of himself.

"Now I know this is some sort of joke." She laughed, but George looked confused. "Alright, I guess it wouldn't hurt to play along. What would you like to talk about?"

"You changed it." He told her as though she had a clue what he was talking about.

"Changed what?" She began walking again and he kept pace with her.

"The book. You spent a lot of time on your paper yesterday instead of procrastinating and you may finish your paper earlier than expected. Before, you were supposed to take longer."

"Before?" She asked, but he kept talking.

"That's great news. It means that the entire thing is changeable and that I'm not here for nothing. We weren't sure about my ability to change anything, you see."

"Hmm." Elizabeth made an indistinct noise, not understanding anything he was trying to tell her. She kept walking and George kept up with her, not noticing that she thought he might be a bit crazy.

"But now that I know, we should get started." He kept using the word 'we' as though she was in on the joke with him.

"Alright. You just let me know how that goes." She said, continuing to walk, hoping that he would understand that he was on his own with whatever he was trying to do.

"Well, I can't change anything. It has to be you. I'm just here to help you."

"Help me to change what?"

"I can't really tell you. It's probably better if you don't know, anyway."

"That's convenient." She rolled her eyes.

"I feel like I'm getting a bit of skepticism from you." He was amused, Elizabeth could see it in his eyes.

"Do you? That's strange. Well, let's see if we can pinpoint the problem. You come to my apartment looking and sounding like that and tell me your name is George, you tell me that I'm a character in a book, and you tell me that we have to change the future. Do you see anything in that to be skeptical about?"

"I may have gone about this the wrong way." He said, realizing how it sounded. "I'm afraid that I was a bit enthusiastic when I arrived at your door yesterday. We weren't sure if I was going to make it at all and I was so excited that it had worked that I didn't think my way through what I was going to say to you. That, and I wasn't quite expecting…you."

"Who were you expecting?"

"Oh, I was expecting you, I knew that Leah had just left and that you were alone, but you look different than I imagined. The author didn't describe you in detail, she just said that you had dark brown hair and that your eyes were a clear blue. The rest was left to the imagination and I was imagining someone a little less…" He trailed off, lost in thought. She was...what? Too tall, too menacing, too American?

"A little less what?"

"A little less…pretty?" He said it almost as though it were a question.

Elizabeth hadn't ever given her appearance much thought. Yes, she had dark brown shoulder length hair as George had said, but her friends would have balked at the description of her eyes. They weren't just clear, they were the lightest blue one could imagine, a deep contrast to her hair. Her skin was pale and she was tall and thin. Thanks to braces when she was younger, her teeth were straight and white and her ever present smile was welcoming and warm. She supposed that she could be considered pretty.

"You said that I was just what you imagined." She accused him.

"I meant your personality."

"Oh." They walked in silence for a moment. Elizabeth had no idea what to say to him, and he seemed to be thinking things over.

Finally, he said, "you and Leah have been friends for four years, right? I think I remember reading that you met on your first day of university."  
How did he know that? Elizabeth glanced over at him. She was uncomfortable, he shouldn't have known anything about her, they had just met. Had he been watching her, talking to her friends? Was he dangerous? He knew more about her than he should have if he was just playing a simple joke. She changed routes and instead of heading back to her apartment, she headed to the student union building to get something to eat. She didn't want to be alone with this guy. He didn't seem to care that they had just changed directions. They made it to the student union and Elizabeth stood in line and bought some food. George seemed amused at what she was doing for some reason. He watched her closely and sat with her when she had everything she needed.

"What are you really doing here?" She asked him bluntly. She wanted to get everything out in the open so that she knew how to deal with this guy and get rid of him. "And please don't treat me like a child. Just tell me the truth." He considered her for a moment. It was clear that she wasn't going to believe what he had told her, so he was going to have to change tactics.

"Okay," He said, thinking for a moment. "I'm here because a…friend told me about you. You're getting ready to graduate but you don't have a plan for what to do after you've finished. You've been taking care of your roommate which has been draining on you. And you've been lonely since your parents moved to Guam. Once I heard, I…volunteered to come and see if I could help you."

All this was true. Her father was in the military and had recently been stationed in Guam, which was much too far away to visit often. She had been worried about what to do after graduation, her options were limited. She had an internship with an advertising agency which she did two days a week after class, but it wasn't what she wanted to do, she wanted to work in publishing. But most of those jobs required more education and she wasn't sure if she was ready to go to grad school yet. And then there was Leah. She and Leah had been best friends since they had been paired up as roommates their freshman year. As they had gotten to know each other, Elizabeth realized that Leah had been through a lot and needed all the friendship she could get. And she did worry about Leah. But why would someone be telling all of this to this person sitting across from her? Which one of her friends would have recruited a random stranger to check on her?

"A friend of mine told you all that? Which friend?" She asked suspiciously.

"I don't think I should tell you." He said evasively, not meeting her eye. He was acting even more strangely now than he had been with his crazier story. She couldn't figure him out.

"Well, what did she want you to do? Surely she didn't tell you how to help me?"

"No, I don't know how to help you. I'm here to keep you company and to help you come up with some ideas."

"I have plenty of company."

"But not mine." He said cheekily, grinning. Elizabeth couldn't help but smile. He was right, she didn't know anyone like him. "So, let's begin."

"Okay. Do you happen to have a job lined up for me for when I graduate? A BA in English isn't the most marketable degree." She said jokingly even though it was the truth. She had decided on a degree in English because she wanted to do nothing more than sit around and read books all day. But she had discovered that there weren't many jobs like that.

"Sorry, no. I have no idea what you m…graduates do to get a job. But I'd like to help you with your roommate problem." Out of all her problems, that was the one he wanted to focus on, the one that wasn't really a problem at all?

"I don't have a roommate problem. Leah is great."

"Yes, she's nice. But you've been looking after her."

"I haven't been looking after her." Elizabeth argued, "I've been a friend to her."

"Semantics." George was grinning. He seemed to enjoy it when she got defensive.

"I suppose I should stop interacting with her and just think of myself all the time?"

"Certainly not. I wouldn't want you to disappear altogether, and that would change the book, I mean situation completely for everyone. No, we're going to have to be more subtle than that. Yours is the only outcome I want to change, with some small exceptions. Everyone else's needs to stay the same."

He was talking crazy again. Elizabeth eyed him suspiciously.

"This would be a lot easier if you'd just believe my first explanation. Then we could really get something done rather than tip-toeing around pretending like this isn't happening." He told her.

"It would be even easier if I just recognized that you're some sort of crazy stalker and I called the cops on you." His eyes widened.

"Are you afraid of me?"

"Not really. I know self-defense." She said, trying to sound tough.

"No, you don't." He said, his face tightening slightly. He suddenly looked tired. It was the first time that she had seen anything but a smile on his face and it was unnerving. There was something wrong here. But instead of making her feel afraid of him, it made her feel concerned for him. Was he okay?

"But I can scream really loudly and I can run faster scared than you can mad." She tried joking.

"Now, that I believe." He smiled again. She was relieved.

"Great. Now, I have to go to class, so…" She was trying to hint that she had to go and that he should run along, but he smiled and stood up with her.

"Okay. Where are we going?"

"We?" Surely he didn't think that he could come. He wasn't invited.

"Of course. I don't really have anything else to do, and it will be fun to see what you Yanks do at University. Don't worry, no one will notice I'm there."

"You're a little hard to miss." She told him, looking pointedly at his bright red hair.

"Trust me."

She didn't trust him, but she shrugged. The worst that could happen is that he would be asked to leave and she could pretend that she didn't know him. They walked to her class and he stepped away for a little bit to visit the men's room. Class started and she didn't see him come in, so she assumed that he had realized that he shouldn't be crashing her class and left.

"Who's this Hemingway character?" She heard whispered in her ear as she packed up her things at the end of class. She jerked away from the whisper, startled, and saw George.

"What?" She asked. "Everyone knows who Earnest Hemingway is."

"Do they? I gathered that he's an author from your class. Is his stuff any good?"

"You must be joking." She said, incredulous. Earnest Hemingway was one of the most widely recognized American authors, surely he had been mentioned in whatever school George had been to. He grabbed her copy of Islands in the Stream, which they had been discussing, and flipped through it. "Didn't you have to read any American Literature in school?"

"I'm afraid not." He laughed for some reason.

"Well, why don't you take that and read it. It's not his best work, but it's still pretty good." She indicated to the book he was holding. He shrugged and kept hold of it.

She had finished her classes for the day, so she headed back to her apartment, wanting to continue writing her paper. Since she had actually figured out which direction she wanted to take with her paper and had begun writing, it would be easy to continue where she had left off. She would be able to finish in the next week or so and then could spend her time editing, like she had planned.

"You're on your way back to your apartment to keep writing your paper, aren't you?"

"I am. How did you know that?" He smiled at her without explaining and she rolled her eyes at him. He still wanted her to believe his explanation for why he was there, but it was just too crazy.

"I'm going to let you carry on and I'll entertain myself for a while. You've made good progress and I wouldn't want to get in the way."

"It's thanks to you I've made good progress." She mumbled as he walked away.

"What was that?" He stopped and turned to look at her, smirking. "You're going to give me some credit for your sudden desire to finish?"

"More like for my sudden desire to stubbornly prove you wrong." They both laughed and he changed directions and continued walking with her, enjoying a few more minutes with her.

"I like your obstinance. It's one of the reasons your character was so endearing. It's too bad you can't pass that along to other people." He mused. Elizabeth shook her head and they parted when they arrived at her building.

Why would anyone want to pass stubbornness and pigheaded desire to do what she had decided to do on to other people? If anything, Elizabeth felt that there were times when it would have been better if she had been a little more flexible.

She walked up to her apartment and started working on her paper. Five minutes later Leah came in.

"Hi." Elizabeth called out. Leah popped her head around the corner and saw her friend hard at work.

"Hey. Look at you getting some writing done." Leah said, surprised.

"Yeah. I finally figured out my angle and how to present it. It's coming fast now. I should be done in a couple of days."

"That's great. But does that mean that you don't want to come out tonight? Some of us were planning to go dancing." Leah did a little dance move to entice Elizabeth to go out with her.

"Tonight?" She had so much work to do, how could she possibly go out?

"Today's Friday, you know, the weekend?" Leah said, rolling her eyes. Elizabeth didn't always pay attention to details when she was focused.

"Oh. I've lost track somehow. No thanks, I want to keep going on this now that I'm in the groove."

"Oh, come on. It will be fun." Leah tried to convince her.

"Sorry."

"We're graduating soon, your paper won't matter so much next month once you have that diploma."

"Can't."

"You look like you could use a break."

"I'm good, I just started."

"You have plenty of time to write that, one little day isn't going to hurt you."

"Nope."

Leah draped herself over Elizabeth's keyboard. "Please, please, please." Elizabeth playfully pushed her away.

"Not tonight. Maybe tomorrow." And she when back to typing.

"Matt is going to miss you."

"Why don't you take him with you. He could use some company."

"I should have known. You never do anything I want." Leah complained facetiously. If anything Elizabeth was very accommodating when it came to Leah and she knew it. Elizabeth's stubbornness did show itself occasionally and when it did, Leah knew that she didn't have a chance of changing her mind.

"Because I'm tenacious?"

"Stubborn was the word I was looking for." Leah teased.

"Well, some people think that my stubbornness is a good thing."

"That can't be true. Do you remember that time we got in a fight over orange M&M's? That was the most ridiculous display of obstinacy I've ever seen."

"Orange goes on top because it's the best M&M color." Elizabeth said, looking like she was ready to reargue the issue all over again.

"See, look at you. Don't you think a little softening would be good for you?"

"There are times when it's a good thing to stand your ground, Leah." Elizabeth said, looking serious. Leah was surprised by Elizabeth's turn of mood when they had been joking just a moment before. Elizabeth wasn't quite sure herself what had happened to change her mood, but she knew that Leah could use this advice. She always seemed to be giving in to everyone, conceding when she should be arguing, accepting defeat when she should be claiming victory, taking the blame when she should be standing up for herself.

"Maybe you're right." Leah agreed, appearing to be lost in thought. Throughout their friendship, Elizabeth had been careful to be optimistic and uplifting to Leah, especially after finding out that Leah had had a rough childhood. Elizabeth usually let other people do the criticizing and nagging. She wanted Leah to have somewhere she could go to always feel good about herself. After all, she was just Leah's roommate, not her mother or her teacher or her boss; she had the luxury of usually only having to give positive reinforcement. But there were times when Elizabeth couldn't help herself giving Leah some advice, and Leah was always very good about listening since Elizabeth didn't give it often.

"See, there you go again, always agreeing with me." Elizabeth joked, trying to lighten the mood once more. Leah pushed her playfully.

"I guess this means we'll have to find someone else to drive us home." Leah complained.

"Sorry." Elizabeth said, but not really sorry at all. It was someone else's turn to play designated driver, or they could take a cab. Elizabeth was happy that it wouldn't be her problem that night.

"Fine. I'll leave you alone. You're a lot more fun when you're not thinking about your future, you know." Elizabeth stuck her tongue out at her friend as Leah walked out the door.

Elizabeth called Matt to tell him she wasn't going anywhere that night and then continued to write, taking short breaks to stretch and grab snacks, but she had been making real progress and didn't want to lose any momentum. She worked late, though not late enough to be awake when Leah returned home.


	2. Rough Night

The next morning after breakfast, Elizabeth peeked in to see if Leah had made it in safely. She had. Leah was stretched out on her bed in the clothes she had worn the night before, snoring lightly. Elizabeth smiled and went out for a walk before getting back to work on her paper. It was a beautiful morning, it was a shame that she had to go back inside soon and shut herself off from everything. She knew she couldn't stop writing now, she was getting so much work done. But she was going to enjoy a few minutes of sunshine before getting back to it. As she was walking, she heard a car backfire and when she looked around to see where the car was, she saw George walking quickly over to her. She wasn't surprised to see him, but she was surprised that she wasn't unhappy to see him. He was just so pleasant.

"Good morning, Elizabeth." He greeted her with his usual smile.

"Hello again. I see that you haven't given up on me yet."

"On the contrary, I'm more determined than ever." And he did look determined.

"Why is that? Nothing's happened."

"Actually, something has happened." He said, and this time he didn't sound happy about whatever had changed. "You were supposed to go out with your friends last night but you didn't." He couldn't possibly be unhappy because she had stayed in.

"I probably would have gone with them under normal circumstances, but I stayed at home working on my paper." She replied.

"It's my fault." He mumbled under his breath. Elizabeth heard him and was actually a little worried by his reaction. What was his fault? "How is your friend this morning?" He asked, looking at her closely.

"She was still sleeping when I left. She must have come home late last night." He nodded, acknowledging that he had heard her, but he fell silent. Yes, he really was crazy. But Elizabeth figured that if he was going to do something to her, he would have done it by now. He was just harmless crazy. She didn't think that she needed to be afraid of him.

"This is going to be harder than I thought." He mused out loud to himself.

"Well as long as something's changed, don't you think your work here is done?"

"No, the…thing I want to change is still going to happen." He had that look on his face again, the one that made him look tired. Elizabeth couldn't imagine what could make someone look that way, but whatever it was, it wasn't good. He shook off the look and changed the subject by handing her book back to her. "Thank you for the book. It was quite good. Hemingway's not a bad writer, is he."

"Oh no, some people would even say that he's a pretty good writer." Elizabeth joked.

"But why did it have to end in death?"

"You've just asked the question every English major asks about every book they have to read in college." She teased. "I suppose it's to help the characters or the reader learn some important lesson that can't be learned with rainbows and butterflies."

"There are other ways of learning a lesson." He said seriously.

"I know. But what can make a person look into their soul more deeply than a death? And there are so many ways death affects people, some people become frozen, unable to move past it, some people are motivated on to great or terrible action, some people look inward and make small but necessary changes in themselves. And death is universal, everyone will be exposed to it at some point."

"But it's also terribly, terribly permanent and what we don't read about in books is how it affects the people who aren't the ones who are supposed to be learning a lesson, the other people who loved the character and have to deal with it when they had nothing to learn, they just happened to have lost someone they love."

"You don't think that even minor characters have something to learn from the death of a loved one, even if we don't read about it?" She asked. He looked as though this was something he hadn't thought about, and perhaps didn't want to think about.

"So, you think that death is always the best way?" He looked tired again. He had been through something.

"Just between us…" She said quietly with a conspiratorial air, "I prefer a happy ending, every time." George burst out laughing. He reached out to her and put his arm around her and gave her a quick squeeze before releasing her. She laughed.

"So, we're agreed, there are other ways of learning a lesson?"

"Of course there are, just don't tell my professors I said that." She joked.

"I'm glad we agree. I would…" he trailed off as he saw someone coming toward them quickly. Elizabeth looked up and saw that it was Matt, and he didn't look too happy.

"Lizzie! I was hoping we could have breakfast together." Matt said, looking slightly out of breath and looking George over.

"Sure. This is George. George, this is Matt." They nodded at each other.

"How do you two know each other?" Matt asked her.

"Oh, we don't know each other, really." Elizabeth said mischievously, wanting to see if George would give a reasonable explanation of what he was doing there. Matt looked at the two of them, clearly not satisfied with that answer.

"Elizabeth was just telling me why books have to end in death." Matt looked surprised. That wasn't what he was expecting to hear.

"Are you in Lizzie's classes?"

"Just one." George replied with a straight face. It was true he had been to one of her classes. Elizabeth snorted, but Matt was mollified.

"Oh. Okay, then. Would you like to come with us? To breakfast, I mean. You're welcome to invite someone to join us, a girlfriend maybe…" Matt said, trying to find out if George was after his.

"That's nice of you, but my girlfriend isn't near enough to make it."

"Yes, I don't imagine that Angelina wants to come all the way from London just to go to breakfast with us." Elizabeth said, joking about his resemblance to George Weasley. She expected that he would laugh, but instead he had a different reaction. George stared at her, his mouth wide open, but composed himself quickly. Matt shrugged and they went to the student union for breakfast. She hadn't expected a reaction from Matt, he was the only person she knew who hadn't read the books, but the reaction from George was definitely odd.

Matt was a little closed off around George, but George was so friendly and funny that Matt couldn't help but laugh at some of the things he said.. They made it through breakfast without too much awkwardness and afterward, George said that he had to go. Matt and Elizabeth made their way back to Elizabeth's apartment.

"How was dancing last night?" Elizabeth asked him. He hadn't been interested in the dancing so much, he just wanted to get out and enjoy the evening with friends.

"It would have been a lot more fun if you had been there."

"Sorry about that."

"No you're not."

"I am a little." She said defensively, grinning at him. "I did get a lot done on my paper, so I'm not super sorry. Just a little. I guess I'm this much sorry." She held up her thumb and index finger to show about an inch. Matt rolled his eyes at her. She was trying to make him laugh, he still looked a little tense after their breakfast and wasn't acting like himself. "Well I'm almost finished and when I am I'll be able to spend a lot of time with you. Almost too much time since I don't have anything to do after graduation yet. You'll be pleading with me to get a job."

"Well, I already have one. You'll be entertaining yourself."

"What? You're not going to throw your future aside just to keep me company? What kind of boyfriend are you?" She asked, tongue-in-cheek.

"Heartless." He grinned at her and kissed her. "So, what's the story with George?" He asked as they had continued walking.

"The story? That's a good question." He looked at her questioningly. "To be honest, he just showed up a few days ago and told me that a friend of mine asked him to keep an eye on me. He wouldn't tell me who had told him to do it, but I think that maybe it was my parents. I've been writing them, telling them about how I'm having a hard time deciding what to do after graduation and how it's been stressing me out a little and I think maybe they're worried. And it's just like my mom to recruit random strangers to peek in on me to see how I'm doing. I expect he'll be around for a few days and then leave to report."

"That's a weird thing to do." Matt pointed out.

"I know." Elizabeth sighed. "But he seems nice enough."

"I'd like him a lot better if he'd keep his hands off you, though." Matt said, looking over at her and she wondered if he thought she had been encouraging George.

"You mean the hug he gave me? You weren't worried about that were you? I promise that was absolutely nothing." Matt wasn't typically the jealous type, she had plenty of friends of both sexes and he had never once been suspicious of her actions, until now.

"It didn't look like nothing from where I was, at least on his end." This was surprising. She wondered what Matt had seen in the little squeeze George had given her. He had barely touched her.

"What? Did it look like he was grabbing my butt or something?"

"No, nothing like that. It was just his face. I guess I was far away, but it looked like he was enjoying it more than he should have been."

"Oh, that. I had just said something funny and he was laughing about it. I'm very charming, you know."

"I know." Matt said, and he gave her a little squeeze like George had done.

They made it back to the apartment where Leah had finally gotten up. She was stumbling around in the kitchen when Elizabeth finally found her. She hadn't done anything to get ready for the day. Her silky blond hair was a mess and some of her make-up from the previous night had smeared. And she was still wearing the clothes she had worn the night before.

"Good morning, Sunshine." Elizabeth said cheerfully. Leah groaned. "Did someone have a little too much fun last night?"

"Yes. Keep it down, will you?" Elizabeth and Matt laughed. Leah had gotten herself a cup of tea and gingerly sat herself down on the couch. Elizabeth went to get her some aspirin, which Leah took gratefully. "Do you see what happens when you're not there to keep me from doing something stupid? I go and drink too much and wake up like this." It was true. Elizabeth rarely drank, and usually kept Leah from having too much. Leah usually complained, but woke up the next morning thanking her.

"You just need to exercise some self-control. In just a few weeks you'll have to look after yourself."

"But until then I have you to keep me from doing anything stupid. Hurry and finish that paper so that I can rely on you entirely again."

"Seriously, Leah, this isn't good for you." This was one of the reasons that George had accused her of having a roommate problem, she surmised. She wanted Leah to take care of herself and it worried her when Leah came home looking like death as she did that morning. Elizabeth knew that she shouldn't worry about her this way, but she couldn't help it.

"What, the drinking or the leaning on you?"

"Maybe both. Be a strong, independent lady. I know you've got it in you." Leah laid down on the couch and put her hand over her eyes.

"Maybe when I'm feeling better." Elizabeth shook her head but let it go. She ambled to her room and went over to her computer, much to the dismay of Matt.

"What are you doing?"

"Oh, nothing much, just getting back to work."

"But it's Saturday. Come out with me. We can go for a bike ride or go see a movie or go to the book store. I'll let you browse as long as you want without complaining and I'll even buy you one." Elizabeth laughed. He must be desperate to keep her from writing. "Come on, I miss you. Spend some time with me."

"If I can just get this paper done, I can spend loads of time with you. If I work really hard today and tomorrow, I should have the first draft finished and I can spend the next couple of weeks polishing, which won't take long at all."

"Or, you can hold off until Monday and be rested with a fresh mindset when you get back to it."

"Or, I can do it now and be proud of myself for not leaving it to the last minute like I've done with every other paper I've had to write."

"Or, you could stay true to who you are and stop trying to show off."

"Or, I could do it now and thank my very supportive boyfriend for not giving me a hard time about wanting to get it done."

He looked grumpy about this last quip, but stopped arguing. He knew that he wasn't going to win. "Well, I insist that you give me a couple of hours tonight. You'll want a break by then."

"Okay, that's fair." He smiled and kissed her on his way out.

"See you tonight."

"Bye."

"Right. What are we going to do today?" Leah asked as soon as the door shut behind Matt.

"I'm sorry, were you not sitting right there while Matt and I talked about what I would be doing today?"

"I was, but I thought perhaps you would make an exception for me." Elizabeth leveled her eyes at Leah. "Okay, fine. Be that way." Elizabeth laughed and returned to working on her paper. She was vaguely aware of the noises of Leah getting ready for the day and then heard the door shut, letting her know that Leah was gone. She breathed a sigh of relief, glad to have the apartment to herself without any distractions.

She worked without stopping for hours. She finally took a break when she realized that she was hungry. Looking at the clock she saw that it was nearly 4:00, she had missed lunch and that was why her stomach was making those noises. She stretched her arms above her head and then lay on the floor to stretch out the rest of her body and then heard a knock at the door. It was too early for Matt to be there to get her, but she had a sneaking suspicion who would be standing outside her door.

"I haven't seen you all day. I thought perhaps you had given up and gone home." Elizabeth said to George, who smiled at her and made his way into the apartment.

"I'm afraid not. I wanted to give you some time to work on your paper, so I found something else to occupy my time for a while. You must be nearly finished now."

"I am. It came much more quickly than I expected once I started. I'll be glad when it's finished, everyone around me has made it clear that I'm a terrible person for wanting to finish it and neglecting them." She joked.

"I will admit that it made for a slightly dull chapter." Elizabeth had given up trying to argue every time he mentioned the book that she was a part of. He had dropped the story of her friend sending him and had gone back to the unbelievable story once again.

"Well, we all know that I'm here for your amusement. I'll try to make the next one more exciting."

"Not too exciting." He smiled.

"Hey, don't you have a job or something? How is it that you're able to skulk around all the time?"

"Skulk?"

"Lurk?" She asked. He raised an eyebrow at the word.

"How about visit?" He parried.

"How about prowl?"

"That hurts. Surely I'm not that terrible to be around." He grinned. He loved arguing with her.

"No, beside the fact that I don't trust you, you're a delight to be around."

"The trust will come. But to answer your question, yes, I do have a job. I've just made arrangements so that I can spend time here until the problem is solved."

"Let me guess, your brother is minding the shop?"

"As a matter of fact, he is." George told her, looking like he couldn't figure her out.

"That's very nice of him. You should probably keep him around, he sounds like a great partner." She joked. She wasn't sure if it was intentional or not, but the man in front of her still bore striking resemblance to the George she had enjoyed reading about and she was getting a kick out of making jokes about it. Perhaps he hadn't read the books before, because he was always a little surprised when she said things to him about them.

"That's not a bad idea." He mused seriously.

"Are you close with your brother?" She asked.

"I think so. He was always that younger brother that we teased and thought was obnoxious, but he turned out to be not that bad." George smiled.

"I wish my older brother thought the same way about me. He still thinks I'm an irritating little snot." It was true. She and her older brother had never really gotten along. He lived on the other side of the country and they rarely communicated other than birthdays.

"Are you?"

"Sometimes." He laughed. She went to the kitchen and he followed her. "You don't mind if I eat, do you? I haven't had anything since breakfast."

"Not at all." She reheated some leftovers in the microwave, George watching her closely all the while. She started eating, a little self-consciously.

"Are you going to watch me the whole time?"

"I beg your pardon. Would you rather I looked around your apartment?"

"Sure. Anything but watch me stuff my face."

He laughed and left the room, allowing her to finish her meal in peace. When she finished, she went looking for him. He was in her room, looking at the shelf of books she had accumulated over the years. She was a bit embarrassed by all the papers spread all over the floor, but she had them spread out so that she could find them easily. They were the sources for her paper and would be gone in a few days, but for now they made her look unorganized and messy. George didn't seem to mind.

"This is quite a collection." He observed. She had more books in her closet for lack of room on the bookshelf, but she didn't think he needed to know about those.

"This? This is nothing. One day I'm going to have rooms filled with books. My whole house will just be a library with a small nook for cooking and a bed in the corner of one room for sleeping. I'll hide myself away and drown in the written word."

"And what about your Matt?"

"I suppose he'll either have to accept it or move on." She joked. "What about you? Do you have any collections that might drive away your lady?"

"Collections? No, but my hobby turned into my career and it's a bit consuming. Most people don't seem to mind, though."

"Not even your lady?" She asked.

"Not even my lady. Do you have a favorite?" He asked nodding to the shelf. She looked them over and thought about the ones she didn't own and was overwhelmed by the idea of narrowing down her favorites.

"I don't think I could pick just one. There are three or four from every genera that stand out, but you can't compare apples to oranges."

"Ah, but you can. Oranges are disgusting and apples are acceptable." She laughed.

"What a great comparison. You don't mind if I steal that for my paper, do you?"

"Not at all. If you need help, I'm full of words of wisdom that would sound great in an academic paper. Please remember to mention me when you're quoting me, thought, I want my due credit."

"Oh, don't worry, I wouldn't want to get busted for not citing something properly. Plagiarism is a capital offence. I wouldn't want to get kicked out of school with less than a month left to go over the words 'oranges are disgusting'."

They both laughed and were still laughing when Matt knocked on the door and then let himself in. He looked the two of them over, clearly unhappy to find the two of them together.

"I see you're getting plenty done on your paper." He said sarcastically.

"I was just taking a little food break when George stopped by. I got plenty done." She retorted defensively. She didn't like Matt's tone. She wasn't doing anything wrong.

"Great. Well since you look like you're done for the evening, I'll remind you that you promised to spend it with me."

"I remember. Give me a few minutes to pull myself together and I'm all yours." She went to her room to change and put on a little makeup and pull a brush through her hair.

"Yes, I'll just be going." George said aloud. He could see that Matt wasn't happy.

Matt didn't say anything to George as he left, but he did give him the evil eye. Elizabeth came back a few minutes later and noted that the frown still hadn't left Matt's face.

"Matt, don't be mad. He was only here for a few minutes." She tried to sooth him, but he wasn't having it. He was angry.

"You've secluded yourself from me for days, but you're willing to make time for a perfect stranger?" He accused her. It must have looked bad from Matt's point of view, but Elizabeth knew that he had nothing to worry about and she didn't like feeling as though she had done something wrong.

"I wouldn't have if I hadn't already stopped to have something to eat. I didn't answer the door at all while I was working." This was true, but it was also true that no one had knocked on her door all day, so she hadn't had to decline answering it.

"Are you sure he has a girlfriend?" Matt asked her suspiciously.

"Honestly, no, I have no idea. But he hasn't been hitting on me, if that makes you feel any better." She thought that this would calm him down, but it didn't.

"You wouldn't be able to tell." He mumbled grumpily under his breath, quiet enough that he didn't think she would hear him. She heard him.

"Yes I would." She said indignantly.

"You wouldn't. I had to throw subtlety out the window when I wanted to take you out. You didn't pick up on any of my hints."

"Sure I did. We're dating, aren't we?"

"Yes, you finally agreed to go out with me after two weeks of relentless flirting." Elizabeth couldn't remember what had happened in the two weeks he was referring to. She shrugged.

"Well, if your flirting didn't work, his won't either (if he is flirting and I don't think that he is) so you don't need to worry." Matt finally grinned at her convoluted reasoning. She kissed him quickly and they walked out the door.

The next day Elizabeth returned to her paper and she finished her conclusion midafternoon with a satisfied sigh. She knew that she had editing to do, but it was written and if she did nothing else on the paper, she would still graduate from college. She stood up, stretched and did a little happy dance, which Leah walked in on.

"I'm gonna graduate from college, I'm gonna graduate from college." Elizabeth chanted in a sing-song voice, continuing her dance. Leah joined in, laughing. Eventually they both collapsed to the floor.

"Congratulations, Lizzy!" Leah told her.

"Thanks. Now if I could just figure out what I want to do once I've actually graduated, that would be great."

"You still don't know?"

"Nope. The advertising agency said that they would hire me on, but I don't want to be stuck there for the rest of my life. I suppose I should look into grad schools or something. But, a year away from school won't hurt me." She thought about it. "I suppose I could take a year at the agency."

"Then you could stick around and we could still room together. I'm not going anywhere." Leah was getting a degree in accounting and already had a job lined up at a CPA firm.

"Yeah, we can grow old together and I can remind you to take your pills every day and you can remind me who I am once my mind starts to go."

"We can yell at the neighbor kids when their music gets too loud and drive 30 miles an hour in a 60 zone."

"You can. I plan on getting faster the older I get. I'll probably have to have my license pried out of my arthritic, wrinkled hands when I run over someone's mailbox." They both laughed.

"Do you want to go out to celebrate?" Leah offered.

"On a Sunday? I don't think anything good will be open, and honestly, I just want to sit here and think about nothing until tomorrow. My poor little brain is fried."

"We can celebrate here. Why don't we shop for some treats and come back here and watch the worst, most horrible movie we can find?"

"Sounds good." They bought all kinds of junk food and then returned to the apartment and started watching _Manos Hands of Fate_ , rumored to be the worst movie ever made. They hadn't made it very far into the movie when Ethan knocked on the door.

"Leah, would you like to come to dinner with me?" He asked her. She looked over at Elizabeth, who smiled, letting her know that she should go, and Leah jumped up and got herself ready. While he was waiting for her, he stood in the living room quietly. He looked uncomfortable. Elizabeth didn't know him well. Every time she had met him, he had been polite, but distant. She wasn't sure how he had gotten Leah to go out with him, but Leah was happy enough. They left hand in hand and Elizabeth returned to her movie.

Even only 15 minutes into it, Elizabeth was roaring with laughter. It was just so ridiculous, the dialogue was terrible (not that you could always hear it well, the sound wasn't great), there were inconsistencies in the extremely cheap scenery from shot to shot, the plot was crazy and filled with holes and the actors looked like they had never acted before. It was the perfect movie to rest her mind, she didn't have to think at all watching it, she just had to enjoy the train wreck before her. There was a knock at the door while she was watching and she got up to answer it, still staring at the television. She barely looked to see that it was George, she just waved him in and returned to the couch to continue watching.

George didn't interrupt her, but he did look curiously at the television. Soon, he was as engrossed as she was. He didn't seem to find the movie quite as funny as Elizabeth, but he did laugh at the more absurd things. When it finally ended, Elizabeth sighed contentedly.

"That didn't make sense at all." George observed. Elizabeth laughed.

"I know. Wasn't it great?" She loved most things that were ridiculous. Some people took everything too seriously and Elizabeth felt like the frivolous was out there to be enjoyed and laughed at, not just scorned.

"What was that?" He asked.

"It was _Manos Hands of Fate_ , my new favorite movie."

"So that was a mu…movie." He said. She stared at him incredulously for a second.

"What?"

"Oh, nothing." He said, looking a little uncomfortable.

"Did you just intimate that you had never seen a movie before?" He shrugged. "You can't be serious."

"I'm afraid I am. We didn't have one of those in the house while I was growing up." He said pointing at the tv. "We developed our interests elsewhere." She shook her head.

"Well, you've just seen the worst movie ever made, so every movie you see from now on will be better than that."

"Fantastic." He said, smiling. She laughed.

"Now, what can I do for you?" She needn't have asked, she already knew what his answer was going to be.

"I think, now that you've finished your paper, we can finally get down to working on fixing your ending." She groaned.

"Not this again."

"Yes, I'm serious. It's the whole reason I'm here. We could have done this days ago if you hadn't changed your plans for your paper. I didn't want to interrupt you once you got started."

"Well, thanks very much for that."

"My pleasure. The tricky thing about this is that I don't want to change the essence of the book. It was quite powerful in its way and to change too much would be to change the message. And I don't want to take you completely out because, well, as I said, you're my favorite character and to take you out would be a complete loss. And I don't want to tell you too much because you would be sure to change everything yourself the wrong way because…well, that's just you."

"What do you mean that's just me?" She asked, not sure if she should be offended.

"You've already changed something just because I told you it was going to take you two weeks to write your paper. Your personality won't allow you to sit still and let things take their course."

"What kind of book is it anyway? Is it some kind of romance?" She teased.

"There's a bit of a love story in it." George said evasively.

"You don't want me to fall in love?"

"I didn't say it was your love story." This silenced her. That tired look came back to his face and she didn't want to press him.

"What can I do?" She asked him seriously. She was feeling for the first time that there was something to what he was saying, that he really was concerned about her, even if he wasn't telling her the real reason. He looked her directly in the eye and smiled, glad that she was finally going to start cooperating.

"Well, right now you should keep a close eye on your roommate." She was surprised. He wanted to change her future and she was supposed to keep an eye on Leah? "Where is she, by the way?"

"She went out with her boyfriend."

"She did?" George's eyebrow went up. Elizabeth nodded. He looked concerned about something. "But didn't she go out with him yesterday and the day before?"

"Well, they are seeing each other. I don't think it's occurred to them that they should limit their contact." Elizabeth rolled her eyes.

"But you were supposed to convince her to stay home and study tonight." He said as if she should have known what the plan was, even though there was no plan.

"Well I finished my paper today and we were celebrating. I was saving up all my shrew like behavior for another night when I wasn't so happy."

"Do you know where they went? Maybe we could meet them for dinner." George was now pacing and had a sense of urgency about him. Elizabeth couldn't figure him out. What was he worried about?

"I'm afraid not. If you want to meet the two of them, I could introduce you to them. You can just give me your number and I'll call you when I have something arranged."

"No, that's okay. I think I'm going to go." He said out of the blue. Elizabeth was surprised by the abruptness, but shrugged. He hurried out the door and must have bumped into Matt on his way down the hall because Matt knocked on the door before Elizabeth had stepped away from closing it after George left.

"Hey Matt."

"What's going on with you and that George character?" He asked her accusingly. Matt had the worst timing. If he had just shown up two minutes later, he would have missed George completely and he wouldn't be worrying about nothing.

"With George? Nothing. Why?"

"He was just here, again. Why are you spending so much time with him?" Matt looked mad and Elizabeth was taken aback.

"He said that he's trying to help me with something. I explained all of this to you before."

"And I explained to you before that he's trying to make a move."

"No he isn't." She said, getting a little frustrated herself. "And thanks very much for the trust." She said sarcastically.

"I do trust you." He said, softening a little. "But I don't trust him. He's a little too smooth, a little too…British."

"British men aren't known for causing girls to cheat on their boyfriends." She said, rolling her eyes.

"You know what I mean. All he has to do is talk, using his snobbish accent, dropping extra U's in his words when they don't belong there and everyone around him is charmed." She couldn't help but laugh. This was a ridiculous argument and he knew it. George didn't go around spelling out words like colour just to impress people. Elizabeth's laughter helped Matt see how crazy he sounded and he laughed a little sheepishly.

"Matt, please don't worry. I promise that he's only a friend and if he tries to make a move I'll stop talking to him completely."

"So he's a friend now?"

"What?"

"Before, you barely knew him. You're friends now?"

"I guess so. He's grown on me." Matt scowled at her. "Not in that way."

"I'd feel a lot better if you'd just tell him to get lost." Elizabeth sighed.

"Well, I'd feel a lot better if we changed the subject. Guess who finished her paper today." She said and pointed at herself obviously as though it wasn't clear she was talking about herself.

"That's great!" He said, looking like he wanted to keep talking about George but finally deciding to drop it. "Do you want to celebrate?"

"I may have already started celebrating." She said, pointing to the coffee table where the treats she and Leah had bought were still sitting, most of them nearly gone. Matt laughed.


	3. Scars

On Monday, Elizabeth felt like she should have been relieved to see that George wouldn't be joining her for her first class of the day, but a part of her wondered where he was. She hadn't heard from him since he had left her apartment the night before and she wondered what had made him leave so abruptly. Had she said something to offend him? That didn't seem likely. She pushed him out of her mind and was able to concentrate for most of her class, a task that was becoming increasingly harder since she was so close to graduating.

"Well, that class wasn't nearly as interesting as the last one I attended." She couldn't help but smile when she heard George's voice as she was exiting the classroom once her class had ended. She looked around and he was walking right behind her. She wondered how he kept doing that, going unnoticed and attending her classes.

"The technical side of writing isn't as interesting to me, either. But it's required for my major. I'd much rather sit around and read great literature." He had a look on his face that made her think that he had something to tell her.

"Is everything…okay?" She asked hesitantly.

"Oh, yes, everything is great!" He told her, clearly showing that he was excited about something. She stared at him, one eyebrow raised, wondering if he was going to tell her, or if she was supposed to guess. He grinned. "You may have notice that I left rather quickly last night." She nodded. "I went to stop something that I suspected was going to happen, and I did." She was glad that she hadn't offended him, but was now curious as to what he had been doing.

"That's a bit vague. Would you mind telling me what you were trying to stop?" She knew that it must have involved Leah in some way, but she couldn't imagine what he had been doing. Leah didn't mention anything about him when she had come in the night before.

"I will, one day, but I can't right now. In fact, I promise that when this is all over, I'll give you a copy of the book and you can read all about it."

"And I won't believe a word of it." She teased. He laughed. He was in high spirits. "Whatever it was, it had something to do with Leah, right?" He laughed again.

"It did. I suppose I haven't been terribly subtle in what I've been doing. You've picked up on a few things."

"You mean like the fact that you rushed out of my apartment as soon as I mentioned that Leah was out with Ethan? Yeah, I caught that." She joked. Then she turned serious. "Is something wrong with the two of them?"

"Yes." He stated plainly, which took her aback. George had been so evasive up till now, not telling her anything and dodging her questions, but this was a bold statement.

"If there's something wrong with the two of them, why are you here to fix my future and not theirs? You could be attending Leah's classes with her. I'm sure they're riveting." She was teasing. She couldn't imagine anything more boring than classes on bookkeeping and taxes or whatever it was she was taking that semester.

"Their futures turn out appropriately." He stated with conviction. "What are you going to do with yourself now that you've finished your paper?" He asked changing the subject.

"I have other classes that I have to do work for." It was true, though she hadn't been working nearly as hard in her other classes. She was treating them like she had every other class she had taken, attending the lectures and doing the work last minute.

"Surely you don't have to spend all your time on class work."

"No, I might have time to eat and sleep at some point." She was joking, of course. George liked how her natural way of talking seemed to be flippant and lighthearted, though she could be serious when she needed to be. She could joke about herself an everything around her. He was like that too, and his brother had been that way as well.

"Are you sure you don't have time for anything else?" He looked as though he had something in mind that he wanted her help with.

"Was there something you needed me to do?"

"I was wondering if you had time to show me another movie. A really good movie. _Manos Hands of Fate_ made me curious."

She narrowed her eyes at him. Was Matt right after all, was he trying to make a move on her? "Do you really have a girlfriend?" She asked him bluntly. He looked surprised by the question.

"At the moment, yes." He grinned at her. He understood what she was getting at. "I assume Matt has asked you about my intentions?"

"He has. I told him he was crazy to worry about you, but I needed to check just in case." Elizabeth told him. George laughed. He didn't tell her that he had plans to end things when he finally made it home. No point in upsetting Elizabeth's boyfriend even more.

"Tell Matt he doesn't need to worry about me. I won't be here long enough to steal you away." He assured her. It was true, if he changed things, he would go back and probably never see her again. If things didn't change it wouldn't matter. Elizabeth laughed, too.

"Is her name really Angelina?"

"It really is. How did you manage to guess it?"

"It fits in with the rest of…" She gestured to all of him. "this."

"What?" He said, looking himself over.

"The George Weasley façade. It that intentional? It must be, you're just too perfect." He was looking a little wildly at her but composed himself.

"Yes, a façade." He said and he had that tired look on his face again. He was silent for a moment, thinking things through and then smiled again. "Well, what do you say to another movie?"

"Sure, why not. I have another class at 11:00, but I'll be free after that." She couldn't think of a reason not to, she felt as though they had become friends over the past week. She wasn't nervous around him any longer, in fact, she found that she looked forward to seeing him. That thought should have given her pause, but she didn't give it a second thought.

"Wonderful. What class will we be attending at 11:00?"

"That would be Post-Colonial Literature."

"Sounds interesting, but why don't they just call it American Literature, or Yankee Literature, or those-loud-people-across-the-pond Literature?" He was teasing her.

"Really, you're so comical you ought to perform in the town square." She said, quoting a movie she enjoyed. "We're actually studying literature from India after they achieved independence, which was much more recent than American Independence." She told him pointedly.

"Oh. I suppose that will do just as well." They both grinned.

"But right now I have an appointment with a career counselor, and you can't come." She informed him.

"Well, don't beat about the bush." He pretended to be hurt.

"Okay. Please leave." She was even more blunt. He laughed.

"Very well." He walked off, not asking where her class was or if they should meet somewhere afterwards to watch the movie. She would let him worry about it.

She walked to her appointment and was given some advice on her resume and the councilor actually had connections to a publishing company in New York and gave Elizabeth some information on how to contact them and apply for a job. She left feeling a little more optimistic about her future. Perhaps she would be able to find something after all.

She went to her class, and once again didn't see George but he appeared afterward having somehow heard everything. She knew he was there, so didn't comment when he was suddenly at her side. They went back to her apartment and picked a movie. She debated which movie would be best to show him, a really good movie that was the complete opposite of _Manos Hands of Fate_. She decided on _Casablanca_. It was old, but it was still considered one of the best movies ever made.

She gathered a few snacks from the kitchen and sat down on the couch and he sat next to her and grabbed a handful of M&M's. He raised an eyebrow after eating one but didn't say anything and kept eating. Elizabeth wondered briefly if she should feel uncomfortable sitting so close to George alone in her apartment. After all, he had been a complete stranger just days ago, but the thought left her mind as the movie began.

Elizabeth sighed contentedly after it was over. "I always forget how great that movie is."

"It was considerably better than the other." George agreed. He had been as engrossed as she had been, but it was all new to him and Elizabeth watched his reactions to see if he was enjoying as much as she was. He was.

"A good movie is a lot like a good book. You can wrap yourself up in it and almost pretend you' re someone else for a while."

"You'd make a very lovely Ilsa."

"And you?"

"I suppose I'd have to be Rick, coming in to save the day, giving you up to Matt to fly off into the darkness." He joked. He put his finger under her chin and said, "Here's looking at you, Kid." In his best Humphrey Bogart voice. And all of a sudden, the atmosphere in the room changed. The two of them were looking in each other's eyes and for a moment they each saw something in the other. Elizabeth felt a shiver go down her spine and she quickly pulled away.

"You sounded just like him." She teased. "Are you sure you haven't been faking that accent the whole time and you're really from New York?" His American accent had been horrible. He laughed.

"You've found me out." He said, trying the accent once more and sounding worse than before. They both laughed. "I should be going." She nodded and he headed out the door. She tried to forget about the feeling she had gotten from George. It didn't mean anything she tried to tell herself. She started in on homework from one of her classes and before she knew it, two hours had passed and Leah came in the door, waving something over her head.

"They're doing an undie run!" She said excitedly, putting a flyer down in front of Elizabeth.

"A what?" She picked up the flyer and read it over as Leah explained.

"An undie run. Everyone strips down to their underwear and runs through campus."

"That sounds horrible."

"We're doing It!" Leah stated with excitement.

"Oh no we're not. You can go and make a fool of yourself if you want, I'm staying right here." She couldn't believe that Leah wanted to do this. She had made some big strides in her self esteem if she was willing to run in front of other people in her underwear. There was no way she would have wanted to do this when they had first met.

"Lizzie, you have to do this with me. It can be our last crazy thing before we graduate."

"Leah, there is no way I'm doing that."

"Yes there is. Two days ago you told me that there are times when I should stand my ground, so I'm doing it. This is where I take my stand."

"I didn't mean stand up to me." Elizabeth told her.

"Oh, no, you don't get to exclude yourself from the good advice you gave me. You're going to help me to stand up for myself by conceding to my wishes this time. Who knows what you're going to do after graduation, this might be one of the last times we get to do something exciting together and I'm not letting you skip out on this. You don't have any good excuses for staying home."

"Except that I don't want to parade myself in my underwear for all to see."

"Oh, no one's going to be looking at us, they'll all be worried about themselves. We've got nothing to be ashamed of, anyway, we're both in good shape."

"Why don't you ask Ethan to do it with you?"

"Because, this should be something we do together. It can be a sort of celebration of our four years together as roommates. Maybe we can have Matt and Ethan do it with us, but I want you to do it with me."

"I don't want to."

"Please." Leah begged.

"No."

"I'm not going to let this go. It's not until Friday and I'm going to use all our available time to talk you into it. It would just be easier for both of us if you'd just agreed to do it now instead of making me beg you."

"No." Leah took the flyer and taped it to the wall right next to the door so that Elizabeth had to look at it every time she left the apartment. She had to go to her internship that afternoon and she saw the flyer on her way out. She laughed to herself as she walked out the door. It was the craziest idea that Leah had ever had.

Over the next few days, Elizabeth was continually badgered by Leah to do the undie run and George was still hanging around. He was coming to her classes, though she never saw him. He would come up to her after each one and they would discuss books. He would occasionally talk to her about what they could do to change her ending, but he seemed to be stumped as to how to do it. Instead he was enjoying her company. He was curious about college so she took him all around campus and they talked about different things but only on a superficial level. Any time she tried to ask him a question about his family, he avoided the question, or answered flippantly, or changed the subject. And he didn't ask her too much about her personal life either. The more she got to know him, the more he made her laugh, though there were times when he seemed melancholy, and she wasn't sure it had to do with her.

On Friday afternoon, Leah was getting desperate so she decided to guilt Elizabeth into doing the run with her. It was scheduled to start around 8:00 p.m., so she had to work quickly. Nothing had been able to sway Elizabeth so she was going to take drastic measures. When Elizabeth came back from class, Leah was there waiting.

"Lizzie, you're my best friend."

"Thanks. You're mine." Elizabeth said as she got herself a glass of water. Elizabeth knew where this was going, Leah hadn't let up all week.

"You've always been there when I needed you." Elizabeth nodded. "Do you remember when Dave broke up with me and you tried to make me feel better? You told me that if there was anything you could do to just say the word."

"Leah, you're not still upset about Dave. That was three years ago."

"No, I'm not still upset about Dave, but I'll be feeling just as bad if my very best friend won't join me for the experience of a lifetime."

"It's not the experience of a lifetime, it's degrading." Leah put on her best puppy dog face and tried her hardest to look sad and pathetic.

"Please, Lizzie." Elizabeth looked at her, a little impressed that she hadn't taken no for an answer this time. After all, it was she who had told Leah to take a stand. And she had been thinking that perhaps she was a little too stubborn. And Leah was right, it was definitely going to be something she wouldn't forget doing. Elizabeth sighed.

"Alright."

"What? Really? Yea!" Leah jumped up and down, excited that she had won. "Great! What are we going to wear?" Leah started making plans for the both of them and Elizabeth left her to it. She was immediately regretting giving in, she was already nervous. And it just got worse as the time drew near. Leah hadn't invited Ethan to run with her and Elizabeth didn't invite Matt, this was going to be the two of them having a last adventure as roommates.

Shortly before the run, the two of them walked over to the student union building where everyone was gathering to run. Elizabeth was wound up pretty tightly and when they got there, she was ready to turn around and go home. There were hundreds of people standing around and one of them handed Elizabeth a cup of something.

Under normal circumstances, Elizabeth didn't drink but she was so anxious that she thought she needed a little liquid courage, so she swallowed what was in the cup at one go. Leah stared at her as she coughed when the liquid burned her throat. She felt all of her insides grow warm and she soon felt much more comfortable.

"Are you sure that was a good idea?" Leah asked her, eyeing her empty cup.

"Sure. I feel a lot better." Elizabeth told her.

"But you don't know what was in there."

"Too late now." She said, and grinned. Leah still looked dubious, but Elizabeth was right, it was too late to do anything about it now.

They both turned as someone with a megaphone started speaking.

"WELCOME TO THE 12TH ANNUAL UNDIE RUN!" He shouted. Everyone around them cheered. "ARE YOU READY? THEN EVERYBODY STRIP!" And the throng started to take off their clothes. Leah and Elizabeth had only worn sweats so that they could easily get out, and back into, their clothes and were soon standing in their underwear just like everyone else. There were plenty of people looking around trying to see what everyone was wearing. It was quite a display, people were wearing anything from thongs to long johns. Elizabeth and Leah were going relatively conservative in sports bras and boy shorts. Elizabeth got the giggles as she spotted a group of guys sporting some teeny tiny man thongs. But they didn't have long to look around, soon the whole group was on the move.

They ran through campus, past the buildings where their classes were held, past the dorms where students were hanging out of their windows cheering the runners on, past administration buildings where campus patrol was looking on but saying nothing. They ran for what seemed like a long time and finally ended at the parking lot of one of the dorms where lights and music had been set up and a party had started. Elizabeth wanted to get back to her sweats, she was starting to feel some effects of whatever she had drunk before the run, but Leah wanted to stay and dance, so they stayed for a song and then somehow got separated. Elizabeth looked around for Leah, but couldn't see her anywhere, so she scanned the crowed and walked around looking for her. She spotted someone she knew and went to ask him if he had seen Leah and while she was talking to him, she was surprised to see Matt coming toward her, looking angry.

"Matt, what are you doing here?" She asked him over the crowd and the noise. He led her to an area that was a little quieter.

"I was just about to ask you the same thing. Who was that you were talking to?"

"A friend. I was trying to find Leah."

"Leah's with Ethan. We came to find the two of you."

"That's nice, but we're fine, we were having a roommate adventure." She told him, her brain a bit fuzzy, not noticing that he was still looking angry.

"Is George here?"

"George who?" She shook her head trying to clear it. "Oh, George. I don't think so, why would George be here?"

"I just talked to Seth and he said that he's seen you walking around with a Ginger over the past couple of days."

"Sure, we're friends."

"And I'm telling you he wants more than that."

"Matt, I'm not having this conversation with you again. Let it go." Her mind was suddenly very clear as she saw that Matt was looking to pick a fight with her. Her eyes flashed dangerously as she looked at him.

"Alright, Elizabeth, if you want me to let it go, I will. Maybe you'll see sense if I let you have some space." Was he breaking up with her?

"Some space? What does that mean?" She demanded.

"It means that I don't know if this is going to work." He stormed off, leaving her looking after him a little stunned. That had been unexpected. She had no idea that he had such a jealous side.

She wasn't in the mood to stay and dance, especially since Leah had abandon her, so she started walking back toward the student union building. She had to walk back to grab her sweats and then home by herself, which maybe wasn't the best idea. It was dark and she was still buzzed from the drink earlier and, worst of all, still in just her underwear. She decided to ask a safety patrol officer to walk her home when she walked by them on her way back to the student union. She started walking, but was very nervous and she looked around as she walked, trying to keep herself out of danger.

She hadn't been walking very long when she heard footsteps behind her. She sped up a little bit.

"Elizabeth?" she heard a voice behind her and breathed a sigh of relief. She turned and saw him coming up quickly behind her.

"George? What are you doing here?"

"Discovering more about American university life." He grinned, nodding at her outfit. She had the good grace to blush a little, but she also grinned. He offered her his jacket, which she accepted gratefully.

"I hope it was educational." She teased.

"Very. Where's Matt? You shouldn't be walking home alone like this." He asked her, looking around for him.

"I think he broke up with me." She told him, suddenly becoming very sad. She had really liked Matt and she was still reeling from their encounter. She was mad that he had broken up with her over nothing, but right now the overwhelming emotion was sadness.

"He did?" George was surprised. "Why would he do that?"

"Because he was jealous. He didn't like me spending time with you. He thought you were up to something." George felt terrible, but he also wondered what this would mean for the book. And there was a part of him that really didn't feel terrible at all.

"I'm sorry, Elizabeth. That wasn't supposed to happen." She shrugged, not wanting to respond and she tripped a little over absolutely nothing on the sidewalk. George helped to steady her. "What brought all this on?" He asked her.

"All what?" She wasn't sure what he was getting at.

"Well, your adventure wasn't in the book before. I was reading tonight and had to rush out to see if the change was real." He smirked at her. She looked down at what she was wearing and grinned sheepishly. It had been a strange thing for her to do.

"What, you mean that the book didn't go into my motivations? I'm surprised, it seems to know everything else."

"It doesn't follow—" He stopped himself, then added "No, it didn't explain." It was a strange answer, but she didn't notice.

"It didn't tell you how Leah hounded me for a week to run with her?"

"It did say that."

"Then you should know that she's never done that before. She always understood that when I said no, it was a definite no. She actually stood up to me this time and I was so astonished that I agreed to do it with her."

"Surely it wasn't the first time." George grinned.

"Actually, it was." Elizabeth told him, still a little surprised about it. George looked at her, thinking deeply. Elizabeth wasn't the only one doing things out of character over the past couple of weeks.

"And what about the other thing?"

"What other thing?"

"Well, unless I'm mistaken, you don't usually partake in beverages of the alcoholic variety." He mentioned as she wrapped his jacked around herself a little tighter. It was staring to get chilly.

"Your book told you that I don't drink? That's kind of a strange detail to include, don't you think?"

"No, it wasn't strange considering the context."

"What could possibly have made that an important detail?"

"You once had a conversation with Leah about scars." He told her.

Scars. Her mind flashed back and she remembered the conversation he was talking about. She and Leah had been roommates for a few months and had become quick friends. They had been asked to go to swimming by some boys from a different dorm and Leah had insisted that she didn't want to go. It was out of character for Leah, who had been enjoying the social side of college. She was acting strange and Elizabeth asked her about it. It took some time, but Leah finally broke down and showed her what she had been trying to hide. She had scars peppering the left side of her body.

"Where did those come from?" Elizabeth had asked her, looking the scars over.

"My father." She answered quietly. Elizabeth looked confused. "My father used to get drunk and…get mad at us. He…pushed me into our glass coffee table and it broke when I fell on it." She hesitantly explained, her eyes down cast, looking for all the world like she was mortified, that she was explaining some terrible fault that she had been trying to keep secret. Elizabeth was horrified.

"Your father was abusive?" Elizabeth asked. Leah nodded, still not looking at her roommate. Elizabeth was suddenly very angry. How dared anyone do that to her good friend, especially her own father? Elizabeth's own experience with abuse had been nonexistent. She had seen a movie that dealt with the subject, but it definitely didn't teach her anything about what people do in those situations. There was nothing she could do for Leah but wanted Leah to know that she would have done anything she could have to help her through it.

Instead of going swimming with the boys, the two of them had stayed up all night talking about Leah's home situation, how she had gotten through the worst times. Her father had gone to jail after a particularly brutal assault on Leah's mom that the neighbors had reported. Finally, her parents had divorced and Leah and her mother had gotten away from her father, but there were things that stayed with her. She had been to counselors and was working through the emotional abuse, but she was still embarrassed whenever she had to explain. Elizabeth told her that she was proud that Leah had been able to survive such a situation doing as well as she was, that she had nothing to be embarrassed about and if anyone asked Leah about her scars, she would tell them to mind their own business. Leah had laughed, but Elizabeth had been serious. She hadn't known Leah when she had been going through her toughest times, but she would be damned if anyone would give Leah a hard time about it on her watch (and look how far Leah had come, not caring if her scars showed as she ran around in her underwear).

In exchange for Leah's confidence in her, Elizabeth had shown Leah her own scar, a long thin scar that started at her lower back on her right side and went up her side several inches. Elizabeth had gotten it in high school. She had gone to a party with friends and had some beer. She had gotten drunk and had walked the edge of a tall brick wall dividing the property of her friend's house and the neighbors, something she would never have done if she had been sober. She had fallen off and landed on one of the neighbor's children's toys and had cut a large gash in her side. Her friends had panicked and had carried her to their car, driven her to her house and dropped her off and driven away, leaving her to deal with her wound and her parents and the fact that she had been drinking underage.

She had stumbled her way into the house where she called out for her mother, who luckily was a nurse. Her mother came running to Elizabeth and saw the condition she was in. She stitched up Elizabeth without saying a word, clearly disgusted by her behavior. Elizabeth had been shamed. She promised right then and there that she would never get herself into such a situation again. Her mother had given her a skeptical look, Elizabeth's resolve had strengthened. She was true to her word. She didn't have another drink until she turned 21 and had really kept away from alcohol, with a few exceptions. She had been careful and had discouraged her friends from drinking too much as well. She didn't try to stop them from drinking, but had encouraged them to stop before they got out of control. And she was always the designated driver. She wanted to make sure the people she loved were safe even though she sometimes felt like a downer for trying to curb her friend's good time.

That night had bonded Elizabeth and Leah as best friends. That must have been why the conversation had been included in the book, Elizabeth thought. She had picked up enough clues from George to realize that the book had something to do with her friendship with Leah. She started laughing as she realized that she had finally started to believe George, that perhaps what he had been telling her was the truth.

"Is something funny?"

"You're not really crazy after all, are you?" Or perhaps he was but he was just terribly persuasive and had recruited Elizabeth to his specific type of crazy.

"I'm afraid not." He smiled at her. She stumbled again and George helped to keep her upright.

"And you're really just a gentleman."

"Why thank you."

"I told Matt that. He just didn't believe me. You're not up to anything, are you?"

"My intentions are just what I told you, to give you a better ending." They made it back to the student union building and she grabbed her sweats and she noticed that Leah's were already gone. She handed George his jacket and she could feel his eyes on her side as she put her clothes on. She touched her scar.

"Yes, that's the scar you read about." She told him, quickly covering it. "My biggest regret."

"But it made you a better person." He said, seriously.

"Perhaps." She said, smiling that he thought so. George walked her back to her apartment and saw her safely to her door.

"This is where I leave you. Have a lovely evening."

"Thank you for walking with me. I was nervous about having to walk all that way by myself."

"It was my pleasure, I assure you." He grinned wickedly. She laughed and went inside.

Elizabeth heard Leah in her room, which was a surprise. She thought that Leah would have been out with Ethan.

"Hey, I'm back." She called out. Leah came out looking miserable. "What's wrong?"

"I'm going to break up with Ethan." She said, tears in her eyes.

"Why? What happened?"

"When we got separated tonight, I looked all over for you and couldn't find you. I saw Mike, you know that guy from your technical writing class, and asked him if he had seen you. Ethan showed up out of nowhere and saw us talking and went crazy. He accused me of cheating on him and moved me away from the group of people, then grabbed my arm and tried to drag me away. I don't know what he would have done if someone hadn't seen him and yelled out at him to stop. A bunch of guys saw what he was doing and made Ethan leave and then brought me home." She had started crying harder as she told Elizabeth what had happened. The two of them sat down on the couch and Elizabeth patted her on the back, trying to comfort her.

"I'm so sorry, Leah."

"I'm just so stupid. The other night we were leaving the bar and he was mad about something, I can't even remember what, and he pushed me and I fell pretty hard. I thought that maybe it had been an accident or something because I was pretty drunk, but now I think maybe he did it on purpose. He was really rough with me tonight." She showed Elizabeth her arm and Elizabeth could see bruises where Ethan's fingers had wrapped around her arm already appearing. Elizabeth was shocked. She hadn't spent much time with Ethan but she hadn't dreamed that he was someone who would treat Leah that way. Then Elizabeth's shock turned to anger. The last thing that Leah needed was someone who was going to hurt her, to remind her of all the things she had already been through and had worked for years trying to get over.

"You're not stupid, Leah. You didn't know he was like that."

"I didn't. I really liked him and I thought he was a good guy. I gave him the benefit of the doubt the other day, but who knows what he would have done if I had gone with him tonight."

"Try not to think about that. Just break up with him as soon as you can. You deserve better than him."

"Do I?" She asked quietly, looking at Elizabeth with doubt in her eyes.

"Of course you do. No one deserves him. People don't get to act that way, ever." Elizabeth said emphatically.

They spent the rest of the night on the couch, talking over the situation, Elizabeth trying her hardest to help Leah to know that she couldn't blame herself for a single thing, Ethan had absolutely no right to behave that way and that Leah was right to break up with him. Leah knew this, of course, but she felt comforted as she heard Elizabeth confirm her decision. Elizabeth suggested to Leah that she should go and visit her mom for the next couple of days so that she wouldn't have to confront Ethan face to face, she could call him and break up with him and not have to worry about seeing him. Leah thought it was a good idea and said that she was going to go as soon as she could the next day. They both fell asleep sitting side by side on the couch, but Elizabeth rolled off at some point in the night and she finished out the night on the floor and Leah made herself more comfortable on the couch when she realized that she had the whole thing to herself.

The next morning Elizabeth woke up feeling terrible. She had a headache from the alcohol the previous evening, she was stiff all over from sleeping on the floor, and she was unhappy about the events of the night before, not just the situation with Leah and Ethan, but also with Matt and her own breakup, which she hadn't talked about with Leah. She had a shower, which helped her to relax and she decided to go out and walk to find some breakfast to clear her head. She left Leah a note telling her to have a safe trip to her mom's house and she would see her soon, and then left as quietly as she could.

She walked slowly, enjoying the sunshine and the quiet. She thought about the night before, what a fiasco it had been. Matt had acted like a jackass, she thought. Maybe it was the sight of her in her underwear in a large group of people that had set him off, but that didn't seem right. He had always been someone who liked to do interesting things, and he probably would have done the run if she had invited him. Maybe it was the fact that he hadn't been invited? She just couldn't understand his reaction. He claimed it was George, but she had other friends who were boys and he had never been jealous before. It was inexplicable.

She was thinking about it, lost in thought when she realized that she had walked further than she thought. She was on the far side of campus, away from the cafeteria. She turned to go back and saw Ethan. The sight of him made her angry and she was filled with the desire to go over and yell at him, to vent her wrath all over him and to break up with him for Leah. She started marching in his direction thinking through what she wanted to yell at him when someone grabbed her arm.

"Where are you going?" It was George, and he looked concerned.

"I'm going to give that guy a piece of my mind. Let go of me." She told him, looking down at his arm.

"Elizabeth, that's not a good idea."

"I don't care. He can't treat Leah that way." She said, struggling to get away, not caring that he didn't know what she was talking about.

"Elizabeth, stop. You can't go over there." He was holding on to her firmly, but she was starting to wriggle free.

"Yes I can. Let go!" She squirmed away and started running but George was faster. He caught her and slowed her down and yelled something that she didn't catch, then all of a sudden, everything went black and she felt like she was being compressed and squeezed and suffocated.  
There were thousands of pounds of pressure pushing in at her from all sides and she thought she might be dying. She lost consciousness after a time.


	4. Elizabeth's End

She awoke to the sound of George's voice and his hand on her forehead. She kept her eyes closed, she thought if she opened them right away she might be sick. She felt like she was spinning.

"Elizabeth?"

"George! What are you doing here? You weren't supposed to be back for two weeks! And who's…blimey, is that…George, you didn't." She heard someone else speaking, but it was a voice Elizabeth didn't recognize.

"Yes, I did. Elizabeth? Wake up."

"Look what you did." The second voiced accused.

"We can fix it in a minute. I have to make sure she's alright. Elizabeth, are you okay?" The world stopped spinning and she opened her eyes to see George and another man looking at her.

"I'm okay." She said, sitting up. She had been lying on the floor of some sort of shop and she looked around as she got up and gasped. Perhaps she wasn't okay after all. She was in the middle of the Weasley's Wizard Wheezes!

It was exactly as she had imagined it, down to the orange paint on the wall. She looked over the things that she had only seen in her mind and thought that perhaps she was still dreaming, but it all looked so real. There were packages of things that shouldn't exist, that couldn't exist, candy that claimed it could turn your friends into different things, love potions, daydream charms and all kinds of other things, though everything was askew at the moment. There were people all over the shop, and all of them were looking at her, including George and the man beside him, who looked exactly like she imagined Ron Weasley to look.

"Are you sure you're okay? I wasn't supposed to put you through that."

"Actually, I think maybe I'm not okay."

"Really? What's wrong?" George asked with concern, looking her over to see if he could see what was hurting her.

"I think I'm seeing things." George looked really worried. He grabbed her hand and pulled her out of the middle of the shop, with Ron following close behind. She noticed that all the windows in the place had been broken, as had most of the glass bottles and plenty of the items that were on the shelves had been knocked over. He took her to a room at the back of the shop and ushered all the people out.

"Does your head hurt? How can you tell if someone has a concussion, Ron?" George looked into her eyes closely.

"I don't know, I'm not a healer." Ron shrugged. Elizabeth started laughing.

"This can't be real." She said. "Who are you people? Is this some sort of Harry Potter reenactment place? Are we at Universal Studios or something?" George and Ron stared at her.

"How do you know who Harry is?" Ron asked her. She laughed harder. Everything suddenly struck her as extremely funny. She was inside a book! It was a dream come true, or maybe just a regular old dream.

"You guys are good." Ron was staring at her as though she were some sort of enigma. To be fair, she did sound a little loopy.

"Ron, why don't you go fix things up front while I talk to her." George told him.

"Okay, but we've got to do something before Hermione finds out. She'll kill me if she finds out what you've done and discovers I've had anything to do with it." Ron left and George directed his attention back to Elizabeth.

"You're not hurt." He said.

"No, I'm not hurt. But I don't understand what's going on. I'm standing in the middle of a fictional place with fictional people."

"I'm not fictional." He said gently.

"George, I've read all the books, I've followed the stories. This can't be real."

"There are books about us?" He asked. And suddenly everything she had been saying about him made sense.

"Yes, of course there are. That's why I'm seeing this. Either I'm hallucinating or you're all putting on a show."

"Elizabeth, I've been telling you for two weeks now that it's your world that's fictional. This is the real world. I thought you were starting to believe me."

"I was until you brought me here. But now I'm wondering if I'm not still asleep. This is a made-up fairy land filled with the most enchanting characters and complicated stories, stories that filled the pages of books, the books that I grew up reading and wished I could be a part of. If it were real, I would have searched for you long ago."

"Well, let me try to convince you. Come with me." He took her hand again and led her back into the main section of the shop where the customers had gone back to their shopping and everything was back in its place. The windows were repaired, the bottles were intact and the items were no longer askew. Her eyes widened as she saw Ron holding his wand and finishing up the last of the tidying up. George pulled out his wand and clean up some of the spilled liquid, making it vanish with a flick of his wand. Then, before she could say anything, George pulled her out the door and into the street, Diagon Alley.

She had dreamed about going to this very street, about buying a wand at Olivander's shop, looking through books at Flourish and Blotts, being measured for robes at Madam Malkin's. And these were no Universal Studios shops, these were the real things. People were moving busily from shop to shop, some had stopped to say hello to friends, others were looking in the windows at merchandise on display. And every shopper was wearing robes of various colors. There were no tourists around, staring at the people in their robes. She was the one out of place in her jeans and tee-shirt.

George took her to the ice-cream shop and bought her a treat and they sat down outside to watch the shoppers.

"Does this look fictional to you?" He asked her gesturing to the world around them.

"It doesn't look real." She smiled, "But I can't deny that it is. But you've been to my world. Didn't that look real to you?"

"It did. But it was I who was able to come to your world. Doesn't that indicate that I'm the one who's real? I jumped into the fictional world."

"Well I'm here now, so that negates your argument. And besides, we don't have magic to help us. If we did, I would have found a way to come to you. And why would a fiction writer want to write about a plain old boring world without magic when they could make up something like this?" She parried.

"Who do you know who could come up with something like this? This is beyond imagination." He answered back. They were both grinning as they argued about who was real and who wasn't when it was clear that the two of them couldn't deny the realness of the person sitting across the table from them.

"I know this isn't real, George Weasley is missing an ear, and you look completely intact to me." It was the one thing that had convinced her that this person across from her was a faux George. The books had said that it couldn't be fixed because it had been cursed off by dark magic.

George pointed his wand at his ear and muttered a few words. His left ear began to shimmer and then disappeared, leaving nothing but a hole. Elizabeth stared at it. "I couldn't walk around in your world with a hole where my ear should have been. I would have been asked some questions that I wouldn't have been able to answer." She was speechless. It really was him.

When Elizabeth had finished her treat, George took her hand again and took her back to his joke shop. Ron was waiting for them.

"What caused that explosion when you arrived, George?"

"Pressure from the long apparition. It happened when I arrived in her world, too. I've got to go see Harry and Ginny. Let's just pretend that you didn't see me, okay?"

"Okay. But I want to hear all about this later." Ron grinned as he looked at the two of them and his eyes lingered on George's hand grasping Elizabeth's. George winked at him and he and Elizabeth walked to the back room.

"Elizabeth, we're going to apparate again, but it won't be as bad as the last time, we don't have to cross from fiction into reality." He warned her.

"Or vice versa?" She asked with one eyebrow raised. He laughed and then they were squeezed into blackness again. George was right, though, this trip was a lot shorter and the pressure didn't seem to be as intense. It ended before Elizabeth had a chance to get used to the feeling.

She looked around once they arrived and they were standing in a comfortable looking room. There were pictures of people who could only be Harry and Ginny all over, the pictures moving, waving and smiling.

"George! I wasn't expecting you back so soon. I've told you repeatedly not to just let yourself in. You can knock just like everyone else." Elizabeth turned and saw Ginny sitting on her couch with a book. Ginny looked over to see Elizabeth and her eyes widened. "George, how could you?"

"I had to." His tone caused Ginny's expression to turn serious.

"Um, just to be clear, he didn't have to, I was fine." Elizabeth told her. Ginny started laughing.

"You must be Elizabeth." She guessed, getting up off the sofa.

"And you must be Ginny." They shook hands.

"I am, though George wasn't supposed to tell you about me, or any of this." She said, glaring at George.

"He didn't." Elizabeth confided. Ginny was about to ask what she meant, but George beat her to the punch.

"She claims that she read all about us in a book. She seems to think that we're the fictional characters and she's the real one."

"Of course I'm real. If you weren't fictional, how would I know that you once dropped a toffy for Harry's cousin which made his tongue grow over two feet in a matter of seconds?" She looked at him smugly.

"Well if you weren't fictional, how would I know that you once jumped into a children's pool that was filled with cooked noodles on a dare?" He laughed at the look on her face which was astonishment mixed with amusement. She was enjoying the argument. Ginny was watching the two of them banter and laugh. Rather than finding the situation amusing as the Elizabeth and George did, she looked like she had something on her mind and it wasn't necessarily good.

"I'd better go get Harry." She said, leaving the two of them to continue talking.

"You once tried to send Harry a toilet seat." Elizabeth reminded him.

"You guilted Leah into doing something called skydiving with you."

"I did not guilt her into it. She wanted to go." She bristled at the sound of the word 'guilted'. He made her sound like some overbearing bully who made Leah do anything she wanted.

"Only after you badgered her for three days."

"She needed something to take her mind off an unpleasant interaction with her father." She tried explaining herself.

"Nothing says distraction like a near death experience."

"It was perfectly safe and I wanted her to know what it feels like to be able to do anything. She doesn't have a lot of self-confidence."

"I know, because of her father."

She wanted to know exactly how much he knew, how much the book explained about Leah, and her for that matter, but Ginny returned accompanied by Harry Potter, _the_ Harry Potter. She felt like she had known him her whole life. Through his books, she had followed him from adventure to adventure, she had witnessed some of the worst moments of his life. She had seen him die and known what death looked like to him. She was in awe of him and it showed as she stared at him when he walked in the room.

"I'm afraid that you're famous in more than just our world, Mate." George teased him. He looked uncomfortable and Elizabeth realized she was staring and looked away.

"Sorry, that was rude."

"Not a problem. If you don't mind if I stare back. I've never met…" He paused, searching for the right word.

"You can say fictional character, she already knows." George laughed. She glared at him.

"George, you weren't supposed to bring her here. We didn't know you _could_ bring her here." Harry told him seriously.

"I know. But it's done now, so we're going to need more of that potion to get her back." Ginny, Harry and George were standing talking and as the conversation progressed, they moved closer together, as though their proximity to one another had some bearing on solving their problem. Elizabeth didn't close ranks with them, she was left a little off to the side, listening to them, feeling a little left out but getting a little insight into what they must have looked like planning George's entry into her world. They were like three co-conspirators in some dastardly plan and she felt like the stolen goods in their evil plot.

"We don't have any more."

"But you had a whole cauldron full."

"Well, we couldn't keep it. If Hermione found out she would have been furious." George nodded.

"We'll just have to make more. Please tell me you haven't lost the instructions."

"No, I have them. I'll get started, but it will take some time." Harry told him.

"Wonderful. I'll just take her to—" George began but Ginny cut him off.

"You can't take her anywhere. What about the statute of secrecy? You're not supposed to show muggles anything."

"I've already taken her on a walk though Diagon Alley. I would have gotten an owl if the ministry had detected something. And I don't know if she counts as a muggle, not being real." He was really enjoying this.

"And what about Angelina?" Harry asked him.

"I do need to talk to her and explain." He said, and this was the first time he didn't look ecstatic about his situation.

"Was this the solution to the…problem, bringing her here?"

"No. We haven't figured that out yet."

"You haven't done anything?" Ginny asked, looking exasperated. The three of them had inched closer together and were now standing in the middle of the room close enough to touch. They were talking as though none of this concerned her and as though she couldn't hear.

"We've changed things, but I don't know if it's for the better or not. The end hasn't changed."

"Does she know?"

"She doesn't, and she's standing right here." Elizabeth said loud enough for them to realize that she hadn't left the room. The three of them jumped and turned to look at her, laughing.

"Sorry about that. You see, we've been planning this adventure for a long time. They're as invested in it as I am." George explained.

"Once we found out what George wanted to do, we were the ones that helped him figure out how to enter your reality." Harry added.

"We've been talking about it for months and to get to see how some of it is playing out, well, it's kind of exciting." Ginny told her. The three of them sat down instead of standing in their little clique. "Would you mind telling us what's changed?"

"You could always look through the book. My copy changed and yours should have, too."

"That would take too long. Just tell us." Harry insisted. George told Ginny and Harry how he and Elizabeth met, with Elizabeth adding a few things every now and then. He told them how she had decided to write her paper right away instead of dragging it out over the next few weeks (for spite) and how that had changed up some interactions with Leah and Ethan.

"One of the nights that Elizabeth was supposed to go out with Leah, Ethan and Matt, she stayed in to do her paper, so Leah and Ethan went out alone. They both had too much to drink and Ethan knocked her down." Harry and Ginny both looked concerned.

"He got physical with her then? He wasn't supposed to."

"I know." George said, looking guilty, as though it had been his fault. And Elizabeth realized that he did think it was his fault. It had been his fault Elizabeth had stayed in. If she had been there, she would have stopped the two of them drinking so heavily and Ethan wouldn't have laid a hand on Leah. "They went out a couple nights later without Elizabeth and I think that Ethan would have hurt her again if I hadn't been changing all his beers to non-alcoholic ones."

"Is that why you left so suddenly that night?" Elizabeth asked him, remembering his sudden departure and how happy he was the next day. He told her he had been able to stop something from happening. Now she knew what he had been doing. He had been trying to keep Leah safe.

"Yes." She was grateful to George for watching out for Leah, but she didn't understand why he didn't just help Elizabeth convince Leah to break up with Ethan sooner. That would have kept Ethan from hurting her completely, and George wouldn't have had to worry about switching out beers. She was about to ask him about his reasoning, but Ginny spoke before Elizabeth had a chance.

"Left suddenly?" Ginny asked.

"Elizabeth was showing me a muggle movie. When it was over, she mentioned that Leah and Ethan had gone out and I went to find them."

"You've known what Ethan is capable of and didn't tell me?" Elizabeth accused him.

"He wasn't supposed to hurt her. Before I interfered and changed things, he didn't hurt her. It wasn't until you refused to go out with them because you were writing your paper that things changed."

"So, this is my fault?" Elizabeth was tormented by the thought that it was her fault that Leah had been exposed to Ethan's violent side. She shouldn't have refused to go out that night. She didn't know that she had been the one keeping Leah safe, if she had known she wouldn't have changed things.

"Of course not. It's mine." George told her. "If I hadn't been there, the story would have gone on the way it was written."

"But then Leah would still be with Ethan, right?"

"Ethan and Leah broke up?" Ginny was shocked and Harry looked as though he was, too.

"Yes." George sighed. "I told you I changed things. I don't have any idea what this will mean for the book. Maybe the whole thing is over already. I just don't know. But, as I said before, the end is still there. I don't think it will tell us the future, the words only change once her reality has changed." He said, nodding at Elizabeth.

"George, I think you just need to tell me what's going on." Elizabeth told him. She had had enough of this tiptoeing around the facts. There were too many things going on that she didn't understand. George, Harry and Ginny all exchanged a look.

"You may as well." Ginny told him. "You've probably changed the whole thing anyway, it's probably going to be a whole different story."

George looked very closely at Elizabeth for a long time. She looked right back at him, her blue eyes matching his brown ones, challenging him, willing him to tell her. Finally, he nodded.

"Alright. Let's go."

"Go where?"

"If I'm going to explain, I want to do it without an audience." Ginny and Harry were disappointed, but they didn't protest. George and Elizabeth stood up to go, George taking her hand and they walked to the door. There was a knock before they could open it to leave. George opened the door, and there stood Hermione Granger. Elizabeth knew it was she, it could be no one else.

"You? What are you doing here?" Hermione asked in a shocked voice. Elizabeth looked behind her, wondering if Hermione might be talking to someone else, but there was no one there. Hermione was looking at her.

"Me?"

"I beg your pardon. You can't be who I thought you were." Hermione looked at George standing right next to her and Harry and Ginny close behind. "Actually, yes you can. Please tell me that you didn't do this, George. Please tell me that this isn't Elizabeth Fairchild and that you didn't bring her here."

"Hermione…"

"How could you?" She demanded. "Do you know what you've done? You've change it. You've changed her. You've messed with things you shouldn't have messed with. If the ministry finds out you could all go to Azkaban."

"Actually, there are no laws against traveling into a book, Hermione, I've looked." Harry told her. This surprised Hermione, but she didn't feel any better.

"Did you help him? Harry, after all you've been through, I would have thought you would want to keep people from using magic the wrong way."

"Why is it wrong?" Ginny asked her. "George wasn't hurting anyone. He didn't tell anyone in the book who he was or what he was doing, except her. He didn't use his magic in plain sight. Have you been mentioned in the book at all, George?" He shook his head, happy to have someone else fighting this fight for him at the moment. "There, you see. He's been careful. The only thing that could be wrong is that the book has changed. It's not the end of the world."

"You changed the book?" Hermione asked George.

"I did. I went to change her ending." He said, looking at Elizabeth. Hermione seemed to soften a little.

"I gave you that book to help you heal, not to send you off to try to do something dangerous and possibly illegal."

"You've known me for years, Hermione. You didn't even consider that I might try to do something dangerous and illegal?" George said, smiling. He knew that she was wearing down. After all, she had done her fair share of dangerous and illegal things.

"But she shouldn't be here. Forgetting that she's a fictional character—"

"Actually, I'm not fictional." Elizabeth interrupted. George grinned at Elizabeth. She wished people would stop saying that.

"Well she's also a muggle and you know we're not supposed to be doing magic in front of her."

"I was just telling Harry and Ginny that the rules don't seem to apply to her. I haven't gotten any owls about magic in front of muggles in regards to her. Perhaps it is because she's from a book. That's kind of magic in its own way." Hermione sat down in one of the comfy arm chairs. She looked back and forth between Elizabeth and George. She knew that it was too late, it had already been done and that yelling was futile.

"You are going to fix this, right?" She asked and George knew that he'd won.

"Of course. Ginny and Harry were just about to get started on the potion that will send us back."

"Alright. Just don't tell her too much about us."

"She already knows nearly everything about us. Apparently, there are books about Harry in her reality." George told her. Hermione put her head in her hand as though everything about the situation was making her tired.

"Yes, as I've already told George numerous times, I'm the real one. The rest of you are just a dream." Elizabeth added.

"We were just about to go. We don't want to keep Harry and Ginny from preparing the potion that will get Elizabeth home." Hermione looked at George suspiciously, but didn't say anything as George took Elizabeth's hand and they left. Once they were outside the house, they apparated back to George's shop and went up to his flat that was located above.

"She took that a lot better than I thought she would." George observed. From all that Elizabeth had read, she had taken it exactly as she would have expected. Hermione had always been someone who loved the idea of following the rules, but had been willing to break them whenever necessary. Perhaps she had stopped breaking rules once she finished at Hogwarts, but in the books she had done her fair share of dangerous and illegal things.

"Alright, so are you going to tell me about what's supposed to happen and why you showed up in the first place?" They sat down on the sofa and George pulled a book out of his back pocket. It had been shrunk so that it fit comfortably and Elizabeth had never noticed he'd had it on him the whole time.

"It will probably be best if you read it yourself." He told her. "Start here." He returned it to its normal size and flipped through to the last third of the book. "I have something that I need to take care of. It shouldn't take to long, I'll be back before you finish." He said and then he left.

She started reading.

He had directed her to the current point in the timeline, where Leah had gone to her mother's house for the weekend. Elizabeth was relieved that Leah was safe while Elizabeth was gone and unable to stand with her. She was surprised to learn that Leah was the main character of the story. She didn't know why, but she had always assumed that she was the main character. Perhaps it was because of the way George talked about her. He knew so many things about her, and he was concentrating on her. But she was secondary to Leah this time. Elizabeth didn't mind, but she didn't understand why George would be so concerned about her and not Leah.

Then she came to the chapter that told about events that happened, or were supposed to happen, the night after graduation.

That night, Leah and Ethan, Matt and Elizabeth go out to celebrate all their hard work. There is too much drinking by everyone, and Elizabeth is unable to stop them, she doesn't want to stop them this time, she feels like they all deserve to celebrate and lets them be, but she keeps to her personal code and drinks water. She wants to make sure that they all make it home safely. She takes Matt home first and then Leah says she wants Ethan to come to their apartment to continue celebrating. They make it back to the apartment where Leah and Ethan get into an argument. Ethan hits her, knocking her into the wall, where she sits, stunned. Elizabeth tells him to stop and that he needs to leave, but he yells at her to get out of the way and tries to go for Leah again. Elizabeth gets in his way and he hits her too, but she gets up and tries to fight him off. Leah is trapped in her own memories of her father beating her and her mother and doesn't move as Ethan takes out his anger on Elizabeth instead of on her. She covers her ears and closes her eyes just as she did when she was younger and doesn't open them until it's too late. She opens her eyes when she hears a crash loud enough to penetrate her covered ears, it's the police who the neighbors had called. They get Ethan off Elizabeth, but she is unresponsive and the paramedics take her to the hospital where she dies a few hours later. Leah is racked with remorse and self-loathing, it's her fault that Elizabeth has died and she vows that she'll never be too weak to stop something like this ever again. It's Elizabeth's death that helps her to grow stronger, to stop letting other people decide her fate and she keeps in the front of her memory all that Elizabeth taught her about being strong, about being the best friend anyone could ask for, about not settling for less because she might think that she deserves less. It's at Elizabeth's funeral that she and Matt start talking and they bond over Elizabeth's death and eventually fall in love.

Elizabeth sat stunned when she finished. George was trying to save her life. He had traveled through realities to keep her from dying even though her death had been the climax of the book, the only possible outcome for such a poignant and moving story. She had wanted to cry reading the ending, not just because it was her own death that she had been reading about, but because the author had given such meaning to it, had finished her story so beautifully that Elizabeth thought that she would be proud to end her story this way, even though the very idea of death scared her terribly. There was no other way this story could end, why had George wanted to change it? Didn't he appreciate the value of such an ending? After all, it was just a story, or it had been until George had jumped into her reality. Now if the story ended this way, it would be a much more personal, much more painful ending because he knew her, they had become friends and she wasn't just some words on a page, she was a real person.

And that's when it hit her.

 _But it's also terribly, terribly permanent and what we don't read about in books is how it affects the people who aren't the ones who are supposed to be learning a lesson, the other people who loved the character and have to deal with it when they had nothing to learn, they just happened to have lost someone they love._

He had said these words to her while they had been talking about Hemingway, but he was really referring to himself. She knew his history. She knew that he had lost his twin, his best friend, his brother and that must have been the most painful thing a person has to go through. He didn't want to see her die because he had lived through a death himself. She couldn't imagine why he had picked her book to change, though. What had Hermione said, she had given him the book to heal?

She now understood what had been behind George's actions, and she was torn as to what to do. She couldn't let Ethan harm Leah, she just couldn't. She was willing to let the story play out as it had in the book if there was no other way, even though the very idea was terrifying. But now that she and George had become friends, he was going to have to live through another death unless they could find a better way to end it.

Now that she knew what was supposed to happen, she would be able to help George think of something that could change it for the better. They had some time to work on any idea they could come up with. But if they couldn't think of anything? What would she do?

George came back in as she was thinking it over and was surprised to see that she had finished reading.

She must have looked distressed because George asked her, "Are you okay?"

"You've been trying to find a way to save my life." She stated.

"Yes."

"But that ending was so moving."

"I think we can find a way to keep the feeling of the book without you having to…" He didn't want to finish his sentence.

"But why?"

"Why?"

"Why would you want to change a book? If you didn't like the way it ended, you could have just refused to read it again and forgotten about it because it 'wasn't real' as you're so fond of telling me."

"I think because in some ways you remind me of someone."

"Fred?" She asked quietly. He nodded.

"I should have known you'd know about him. Yes, there are things about you that made me miss him more than ever and I thought that it was wrong to take you away from the people you love. I couldn't do anything about Fred, but I thought maybe I could do something about you."

Elizabeth wanted to cry. George was trying to help himself feel better about Fred's death by saving her. She didn't know what to say to him.

"So, the secret is out. What are we going to do to change it? I don't want Leah to miss out on the important things she's supposed to learn through your death, but don't you think there's a better, less painful way for her to learn it?"

"I hope so. But, George, what if there isn't?"

"I refuse to believe that there's nothing we can do. We've already changed things."

"Yeah, for the worse. Ethan wasn't supposed to hurt Leah until graduation and he's already done it. They've broken up. Matt broke up with me. Yes, Leah breaking up with Ethan is a good thing, but it might make the ending of the book impossible now and without the ending, the book has no purpose."

"There has to be a way to fix it." George said optimistically. "We have two weeks until Ethan is supposed to lose it."

"Great. Any ideas?" George couldn't answer. He had been thinking about it non-stop for weeks now and hadn't been able to come up with anything.

"Why don't we put the thinking on hold for a while and go have some lunch." She wanted to think up a way to change the ending right away, but her stomach was rumbling and was not going to be ignored. Besides, they had plenty of time.

"That sounds fun. Unfortunately for you, it's going to have to be your treat. I only have muggle American money on me."

"I suppose I can take care of this one." George grinned. The two of them walked back through the shop. Ron stopped them on their way out.

"George, Hermione heard that you had come back and was looking for you. You might want to consider going into hiding until you can get your friend back." Ron told him.

"She caught up to me at Harry's house, but I think we're okay. She gave me the standard lecture and then decided that it wasn't worth the effort to continue scolding me."

"That's a relief. Where are you off to?"

"Lunch. I wasn't supposed to be back for two weeks, so why don't we just pretend I'm not here and I'll let you carry on taking care of things here." Ron rolled his eyes but didn't protest as he and Elizabeth left.


	5. How Do We Change It?

"Oh oh, can we go to the Leaky Cauldron? Can we? Please." Elizabeth was practically bouncing with excitement. Now that she had gotten used to the idea of being inside of a book, she was eager to see all the places she had read about. George laughed at her enthusiasm and he led her in the direction of the pub. The pub was just as she imagined it would be and she began to wonder about that. The people all looked the way she thought they would, the places were identical to what she had pictured in her mind. Perhaps she had been a part of the story the whole time, even if it was just in her head. This thought made her happy. She had dreamt of being a part of this world for a long time and her imagination had taken her there. George heard her sigh happily.

"I didn't know a dirty old pub could make someone so happy." George said.

"It's all just as I thought it would be. This is a dream come true." She told him.

"The books were really that good?"

"Yes." She said simply.

"What exactly did those books talk about?"

"Oh, are you ready to admit that I was right?" She teased.

"I suppose I could entertain the idea for a few minutes." He conceded.

"Victory!" She said, making George laugh. "The books followed Harry starting from when he discovered he was a wizard and there was a different book for each of his years of school up through the Battle of Hogwarts."

"They followed Harry?" George asked, pretending to be offended. "They should have followed me. That would have been an interesting read."

"You were in them quite a lot, being Ron's brother and Ron being Harry's best friend. If it makes you feel any better, you and Fred were my favorite characters." The smiled faded from George's face. Elizabeth wondered if she had made a mistake in mentioning Fred, she hadn't meant to bring up painful memories. "You know, I have a bad habit of putting my foot in my mouth quite often. Please feel free to tell me to mind my own business if I cross any lines." And the smile was back.

"You didn't say anything wrong. But I will be sure to remember that." They talked over their food and when they had finished they went back to walk through Diagon Alley. George asked her if she wanted to visit any of the shops and Elizabeth said she wanted to walk through them all. He took her to Flourish and Blotts where she spent a lot more time than George was expecting. She didn't know why he was so surprised, he had read all about her and had attended some of her classes and she had told him that she wanted to live in a house filled with books. But he still grew impatient as she wandered through the shelves looking through books that sounded interesting.

"George, why don't you go help Ron at your shop, I'll be okay here by myself for a while." She told him, noticing that he was looking bored and was dogging her steps as though he expected her to be finished anytime soon, which she wasn't.

"You want me to leave a muggle alone in a magic shop? That doesn't seem like a good idea. I don't think I should let you out of my sight until I get you home safely. Besides, I like your company when you're not engrossed in a book." Elizabeth smiled. She liked his company too. But she wasn't going to cut her time at the bookshop short, even for him.

"You must be nearly done." He complained. She looked at him steadily, picked up the nearest book without looking at it and opened it. She looked down at the pages and snickered to herself as she heard him sigh. She took a peek at him and he was smiling, so she knew that he didn't really mind that much. Unfortunately, the book she had picked up was a theoretical book on the possible magical qualities of cockroaches and immortality. She loathed cockroaches even if they may happen to have magical qualities, so she closed the book and put it back.

"Not that one." She said and picked up another. George laughed. She gathered a few books that looked interesting and then sat down right in the middle of the shop and began looking through them, oblivious to the looks she was getting from the other patrons, and the shop owners. No one said anything to her, so she ignored everyone around her. George was beginning to rethink his stance on leaving her alone, and he considered floating her out of the shop. He casually picked up a book and thumbed through it and then noticed that Lee Jordan was walking past the shop. He leaned out the door.

"Lee, come in here to this very interesting shop for a moment." Lee stopped and came into the shop, looking around.

"George? What are you talking about? You haven't stepped foot in here since you finished at Hogwarts."

"I've more than made up for it today."

"What are you doing in here?" Lee asked him, looking around confused. He noticed Elizabeth on the floor reading. "That's something you don't see every day. Is she the reason you're finding the book shop so interesting today?" Lee nudged George in the ribs.

"She is." George told him.

"Nice." They watched her for a minute.

"Have you just been watching her? You haven't tried to talk to her?"

"Oh, I've talked to her. Would you like to see something funny?"

Lee raised an eyebrow at him. "Elizabeth, would you like to meet a friend of mine?" Elizabeth looked up, saw Lee and scrambled to her feet.

"Lee Jordan!" She said, a touch of excitement in her voice. Lee looked at George questioningly. George shrugged, smiling.

"I see George has told you about me." Lee started to say.

"Not at all. I haven't said a word about you." George protested, laughing.

"But I know about you anyway. George is really teasing me about my general knowledge of…things." She didn't know how to finish the sentence. She wasn't sure if it would be a good idea to let everyone around them know that she was a muggle and that she was from a book. It would lead to too many questions and she didn't know if George would get in trouble. It was one thing for his family to know, it was another to tell other people. Lee didn't seem to notice the weak finish to the sentence, however.

"Well, I don't know anything about you, but I'd like to." Lee said, trying to be smooth. She smiled.

"I should introduce you. Lee, this is Elizabeth."

"And how do you two know each other?" Lee asked, addressing her.

"George showed up at my door one day and tried to convince me he knew my future." She said it flippantly, hoping that Lee would think she was joking, even though she wasn't. It was just strange enough that Lee probably wouldn't take her at her word.

"She didn't believe a word of it."

"Would you have believed it?" Elizabeth asked Lee, who was doing his best to follow the conversation, but was completely lost. Both George and Elizabeth were grinning.

"If it was George, absolutely not. He's not to be trusted." He noticed her accent. "You sound like you're not from around here."

"That's an understatement." Elizabeth laughed.

"Elizabeth is visiting us from The States." George told him, not explaining further. He didn't want to share too much of Elizabeth's story with Lee, either, it appeared.

"Are you still doing work with the Wizard Wireless now that there's no need for _Potterwatch_?" Elizabeth asked him. He was taken aback by her knowledge of his underground work with the Order, but didn't ask her about it.

"Yes. As a matter of fact, I was on my way to work now. You can listen in and tell me if I'm any good. And maybe after I've finished I could take you to dinner. George and Angelina could join us if they'd like." Lee was trying to not so subtly remind George that he had a girlfriend and that meant that he had no grounds for being mad if he asked Elizabeth to dinner. George scowled at him.

"I'm afraid she's unavailable for dinner tonight. Perhaps another time." George told him before Elizabeth could answer. Lee looked disappointed.

"Why would you invite me to meet your friend if you weren't planning on sharing?" Lee asked George.

"I was hoping that you'd be distracting enough to get her off the floor and out of this shop." George told him. "And look. It worked." George grinned at her. She rolled her eyes.

"Fine, I'll put the books back and we can go."

"No need." George waved his wand and the books returned to their shelves." The three of them walked back onto the street and Lee waved goodbye as he headed to work.

"It was nice to meet you, Lee." She said.

"I hope to see you again." He returned as he walked away.

"He's so nice."

"Yes. He's also a bit of a lady's man. You would do well to stay on your guard around him. Unless you like that sort of thing." George joked.

"I promise that the next time you decide to bring me here without giving me a choice, that I'll be extra careful around him."

"You talk as though you're not happy to be here." George protested.

"I'm very happy to be here, but the chances of me coming back are slim, right? Once you've done what you planned to do you won't be coming back to my world."

"Perhaps." George said. The way he said perhaps gave Elizabeth pause. She wondered if she was imagining things or if George was becoming attached to her. He had been holding her hand everywhere they went (and still was as they walked down the street) and had denied Lee the chance to take her to dinner. But, no, George had a girlfriend. He was only holding her hand to keep her out of trouble in the magic world and he had denied Lee the chance because he didn't want Lee to become attached, she would be returning to her world soon and wouldn't be back. She admitted to herself that she was disappointed that his actions were rational and explainable. But she knew that she shouldn't be disappointed. She wouldn't be seeing George after he completed his mission so she shouldn't be getting attached, either. And of course, there was Angelina to think of. George had a girlfriend and Elizabeth wasn't going to come between them. She told herself to just enjoy her time in this world, to take in as much as she could because this was a once in a lifetime experience.

"I've always wondered, how did Lee manage to keep himself out of harm's way while he was doing Potterwatch?"

"He was good at broadcasting from locations the death eaters couldn't find. And he moved to a different location every time he did it. Once, he did his show from the house of a death eater who had been given a job by his master and wouldn't be expected back during the broadcast."

"Really? How did he know the death eater wouldn't be back?"

"Because the death eater was at Hogwarts."

"Lee broke into one of the Carrow's houses to do a Potterwatch?" Elizabeth asked, amazed and amused. What a lot of nerve that must have taken. And no one would have suspected it.

"Did they talk about the Carrow's in the books?" Elizabeth nodded. "Yes, Lee and Fred broke into Amycus' house. They did it out of spite, really. Ginny let us know what was happening at Hogwarts when she came home for the Christmas holidays and we wanted to do something to show our discontent. We couldn't let Ginny be involved because she would be punished, so Fred and Lee broke into his house. But they may have found out because not too long afterwards we all had to go into hiding." George told her, smiling.

"That must have taken a lot of nerve."

"Actually, that was probably the safest place that he worked. No one dreamed that he would do such a thing, the death eaters all thought that they were on top of the world and didn't take any measures to protect themselves or their homes. It was everywhere else that Lee had to keep his guard up and make a few daring escapes."

As they talked, they walked on toward the joke shop. Elizabeth spotted Olivander's wand shop and pulled George in that direction. She stood in front of it and looked in, noting that the only thing on display in the window was single wand on a purple cushion.

"Every child in my world dreams about coming to this shop to be chosen by a wand." Elizabeth told George wistfully. She put her hand on the glass of the window a bit regretfully, knowing that she had no reason to go in. She thought she saw the wand on the cushion shudder slightly, but told herself that she was just imagining things and she and George moved on. Her mood had darkened a bit. Instead of the excitement she had initially felt, she was becoming more and more melancholy as she realized that she might have this one chance to visit, but she didn't really belong there, no matter how much she wanted to. She sighed.

"What's wrong?" George asked her, looking concerned.

"Are you going to erase my memory of this when you've done what you wanted to do, if we manage to do it?" She asked him. He raised an eyebrow at her.

"Do you want me to?" He was surprised. She had been so enthusiastic all day about the things that he took for granted. Why would she want her memory erased?

"On some level, yes." She answered honestly. "If I remember everything, there's going to be a part of me that won't stop thinking about this place. It will be very hard to go about my business when I think about how this is real and how it's just out of reach. I think I'll always wonder what if…" She looked at the ground as she was talking, he was one of those things that she would always think about, but she didn't want him to know it.

"Regret can be a terrible thing."

"Surely you don't have much to regret in your life?" She stopped walking to look at him. He had that tired look on his face again, and Elizabeth realized that she had unintentionally asked him a question that was deeply personal.

"I'm afraid I do." He said, trying to keep it light, but failing.

"Fred?" She asked quietly.

"What if I had offered to go down that hallway instead of him? He was always just a little more impulsive than I, I might have survived that explosion and he would still be alive." He was staring off into the distance so Elizabeth stood on her tiptoes to get him to look at her.

"George, I read about what happened, there was nothing you could have done unless you could see the future. He wasn't being impulsive, the explosion was sudden, unexpected. If you had been in his place, it would be Fred talking about his regrets and not you." They stared each other in the eyes, Elizabeth could see anguish there and she wondered if he didn't wish that it had been him and that Fred was the one standing there with her instead. But the anguish faded and then he was seeing her, and the two of them shared another of those moments when they both recognized that there was something more between them. George unconsciously moved toward her and she was suddenly very aware that the two of them were standing dangerously close in the middle of a very busy Diagon Alley. She broke eye contact with him and looked around and noticed that a few people were watching them.

The moment over, the two of them continued on toward the joke shop. George tried to take her hand again, but she put her hands in her pockets and asked, "So what are the dinner plans that Lee was excluded from? Are you having dinner with Angelina since you haven't seen her in weeks? Will I be left to my own devices? There are a few other places that I'd love to see and I'm sure I could find my way around."

"Actually, no. I went and saw Angelina today while you were reading. She won't be joining us. And I certainly can't allow you to venture out on your own. No, I thought maybe you'd like to see a quidditch game. Quidditch is our sport—"

"I know what quidditch is." Elizabeth cut him off smiling.

"Well, Ginny plays for one of the professional teams and has a game tonight. Would you like to see her in action?"

"Of course!"

"Excellent. I believe they're playing Ron's favorite team, so we'll be able to take the mickey out of him when Ginny helps to destroy the Cannons." The two of them laughed and made it back to the joke shop.

"You keep walking through here without offering to help." Ron accused George when he saw he and Elizabeth come back into the shop. "Are you enjoying this, seeing me slave away while you spend time with someone infinitely better looking than the woman I just helped?" He nodded his head in the direction of a little old witch who had to have been 100 and was missing some teeth. The lady smiled and winked at Ron, who gave her a little wave and then shuddered when she looked away.

"As a matter of fact, I am. You're doing a great job, though. Keep up the good work. We're going to see Ginny play." George told him.

"You git. I'm doing you a favor, you know."

"I know and I'll repay you in full once this is all over. Until then, I think you're needed in the love potion section." George pointed in the direction of the love potions where a not so young coquette was waving in Ron's direction, batting her eyelashes at him.

"Thank Merlin Hermione agreed to marry me." He muttered under his breath as he made his way over. George chuckled as he and Elizabeth made their way up to his flat.

"Shouldn't you be helping Harry with the potion to get me back?" Elizabeth asked as it occurred to her that George was shirking every responsibility to spend time with her.

"Not yet, my shift will come later."

"Your shift?"

"Yeah, this particular potion needs constant attendance. I'll head over to Harry and Ginny's later to do my share. In the meantime, put this on." He tossed her a Holyhead Harpies shirt that was much too large for her and was wrinkled as he had just pulled it from a pile of clothes on the floor.

She looked at the shirt dubiously. "Are you sure you don't want to wear it?"

"No, I'll wear this one." He had another shirt that he was tugging on, which looked worse for wear than the one he had tossed to her. Once he had his on, he looked over at her and noted that she was still standing with the shirt in her hand and wasn't making a move to put it on. "It's mostly clean, I promise. Nothing to be afraid of." She slid the shirt over her head and noted that it smelled like him, which was actually kind of nice. She looked like she was drowning in the shirt, and George laughed when he saw her.

"Don't worry, you look great!" He told her, smirking. She rolled her eyes at him and began to make a few adjustments, rolling up the sleeves and tying the bottom into a knot at her waist. She looked better once she had finished her modifications. "That looks rather nice." He said more seriously though still with a smile, looking her over. Elizabeth couldn't tell if he was still teasing her or not, so she didn't say anything. He offered her his hand, but she shook her head.

"Were you planning to walk to the game?" He asked her.

"Oh, no…sorry…I just didn't want to…"

"Didn't want to what?" He asked with one eyebrow raised. She was embarrassed that she had mistaken his intention, but he had been holding her hand all day and she thought she should explain herself.

"I don't think I can just go walking around holding your hand everywhere, George. I don't want people to think I'm some kind of homewrecker." She said, half jokingly, trying to keep it light even though she meant every word.

"Homewrecker?" He wasn't familiar with the term.

"Yeah, you know, someone who goes around breaking up relationships. People are going to think that you're cheating on Angelina with me." He was amused by what she was saying, she could see it in the smirk on his face. "You can laugh all you want, but I'm only here for one day and I don't want the only impression I leave on people to be that I'm a terrible person."

"You should stop worrying about what other people think."

"Easy for you to say, you've already established yourself as the smart, funny, Dumbledore's Army/Order of the Phoenix fighter for right, joke shop entrepreneur extraordinaire. There's no need for you to explain yourself."

"I'm the smart, funny…what was the rest of it?" He was teasing her.

"You heard me." She said, glaring at him even though she wasn't mad in the slightest. He laughed and she laughed with him. He offered his hand again and this time she took it and they apparated to a quidditch pitch that was already swarming with fans. George kept hold of her hand, but at that moment she didn't mind, she didn't want to get separated from him in the crowds of people surrounding them. Once they made it to their seats he let go and they settled in to watch an exciting game. Elizabeth had a little trouble following the play at first, she had never seen a game, but soon she was enthralled and was cheering loudly like the rest of the people around her. Ginny played superbly and the Harpies won easily, the game lasting only about a half an hour as the snitch was caught early.

Elizabeth and George exited the stadium and apparated to Harry and Ginny's house. Harry had missed the game, he had been working on the potion.

"How did they do?" Harry asked George as soon as they arrived.

"Brilliant. Slaughtered the Cannons." George flopped down on the sofa and made himself at home.

"Excellent. Ginny will be happy when she gets home."

"How's the potion coming?"

"Pretty well. It should be done tomorrow afternoon." Harry told them. This surprised Elizabeth. She hadn't realized that it would take so long. "Why don't I show you where I'm at so that you can continue on." Harry said and they followed him to a room toward the back of the house that contained the cauldron and potion supplies. Harry handed George a piece of parchment that had the instructions on it and pointed to the spot where he was.

"Thanks for your help with this, Mate." George told him seriously. Harry nodded and headed out the door of the room to wait for Ginny.

"What do we do now?" Elizabeth asked George.

"Well, I have to make sure that this potion turns out alright, which means I'm going to have to stay here for the night. I have to add antimony every fifteen minutes all night long. You, however, are unfettered. You can get a good night's sleep and be ready to return home in the morning."

"There's nothing I can do to help?"

"I'm afraid not, my little muggle. I don't know what would happen to the potion if I were to let you lend a hand." He became thoughtful. "Actually, that's a very good question. I wonder what would happen if a muggle were to try to brew a potion. It's not as though you need a wand to add ingredient to a cauldron and stir, it's more a problem of getting the right ingredients in the first place. I should ask Hermione if she knows."

Harry and Ginny came back into the room as George was thinking it over.

"Congratulations on your win." Elizabeth greeted Ginny, who was smiling and looked tired but elated.

"Thank you. The Cannons are never a real challenge. Did you enjoy the game?" She asked noting the Harpies shirt that Elizabeth was still wearing.

"I did. It was faster paced than I expected, but exciting."

"Your books explained quidditch?"

"Oh, yes. They…" Her voice faced as she noticed how intently everyone around her was looking at her. It struck her that her books had given her a lot of information, so much information that Harry himself probably hadn't shared everything with everyone around him, and maybe didn't want to. There were some terribly personal things in them and she shouldn't be giving out too much information in case she inadvertently said something that was meant to be private. She decided that she had to stop talking about the books all together. "Yes." She finished lamely. The other three noticed her awkwardness, but didn't press her.

"Good." Ginny said, giving her a look but deciding to move on. "We weren't sure what George had planned for you, but we wanted to offer you our guest room for tonight while George babysits the potion."

"That would be lovely." She thanked Ginny gratefully.

"What? You don't want to stay up all night and watch me perform some seriously complicated and powerful magic?" Ginny snorted. "Too much? How about, 'you don't want to keep me company while I stay up all night stirring the pot?'" Elizabeth laughed.

"I'd be happy to spend some time with you, but if it's as exciting as you make it out to be, I probably won't last ten minutes before I get bored and want to go to sleep."

"But I'll be here."

"Fifteen." She joked and Ginny and Harry laughed.

"Come with me." Ginny told her. "I'll show you where the room is." Ginny and Elizabeth left the room while Harry started to tell George about something that happened at the ministry while he had been away. There was a knock at Ginny's door before they could make it to the spare room and Ginny opened to find Hermione and Ron waiting outside. They came in and Ron went to find Harry and George while Hermione followed Ginny and Elizabeth to the spare room.

The room Ginny showed to Elizabeth was small but comfortable looking. Elizabeth didn't need much room. She didn't have anything with her, not even a toothbrush. Hermione held up a small bag containing some essentials.

"I asked her to bring you a few things, it sounded like you and George apparated rather suddenly."

"We did. Thank you." Elizabeth looked in the bag and saw a toothbrush and toothpaste, floss, deodorant, a hairbrush and a small bottle of lotion. When she looked up, she saw Hermione looking at her closely.

"You look exactly as I pictured you." Hermione told her.

"You look exactly as I pictured you. All of you do, actually." Elizabeth told her laughing. Hermione didn't laugh with her, but looked more thoughtful.

"Really?"

"Yeah. It's been like walking into my own imaginary world."

"Well it is, in a way. And you're from mine." Hermione told her.

"That's funny. I would have thought that I would look like George had imagined me, he was the one who came into my world. But he said that I didn't fit what he thought I would look like."

"It's probably because it was I who gave him the book. It was my fault that he discovered your world. But not my fault that he came to you." She said, looking at Ginny, who had the grace to look guilty.

"You gave him the book to help him heal?" Elizabeth echoed Hermione's words from earlier.

"Yes. It's been more than two years and he still can't move on from Fred's death. He acts like he's fine, but he's not. We've all been worried about him. I thought if he read about how someone moves on from the death of the person who meant the most to them, perhaps he could find a way to accept what happened."

"I'm afraid your plan had the opposite effect." Ginny told her. She sat down on the bed and Hermione and Elizabeth followed her example as they talked. "When George finished the book, he came to see me and he was absolutely frenzied. He couldn't stop talking about your death, Elizabeth. He saw the reasoning behind it, but he kept saying over and over that there must have been a better way. He told me that the author had done the reader the biggest disservice by taking such a character away. How were we supposed to believe in a good world if the best people have to leave it? With everything he said, I could see him feeling worse and worse about Fred. I suggested that he try to contact the author and talk to her about it."

"That's a lot more reasonable than what he ended up doing." Hermione pointed out.

"I know. We weren't trying to be completely irresponsible, at least not at first. He thought about it and actually looked up ways to contact her, but eventually decided against it. The author wasn't going to recall all the copies of the books she had sold so that should could change the ending. He wanted to change it himself. I think he felt like if he could do something to change it, he wouldn't feel so bad about not being able to save Fred. That was when he began thinking about going into the book directly."

George poked his head into the room at that point and saw the three girls sitting on the bed talking. He smiled at the sight of them. "What are the three of you doing in here?"

"Hunting elephants." Elizabeth said. The answer was ludicrous, but so was the question. Hermione and Ginny giggled and Elizabeth grinned at him.

"Not having much luck, I see. Perhaps I'm scaring them away. I'll just make myself scarce and leave you to it." He said. As he was going, they heard him chuckle and mutter "cheeky devil" to himself.

"He almost seems like his old self." Hermione said.

"Did he change so much after the Battle of Hogwarts?" Elizabeth asked.

"Yes. It was really obvious the first few months that he was mourning, which was fine. But after a while he seemed to realize that he wasn't coming out of it at all and he started trying to force himself back to normal. He put on a good show, but there was always something forced about it. He's gotten better at faking normal, but we all know that he's not better. That was why Harry and I agreed to help him find a way into the book. We couldn't take it anymore, we knew that he had to do something to find his way back and we decided that we didn't care what it was, as long as it worked."

"You didn't care? Ginny, Harry is an auror, he's supposed to be stopping dangerous stuff like this. He could have lost his job, all three of you could have been arrested."

"Hermione, you know that no one is going to arrest Harry." Ginny said, rolling her eyes. Elizabeth giggled at the prospect of someone trying arrest the boy who lived. "Besides, what's the worst that could have happened? I suppose that he could have gotten stuck in the book, maybe the entire book is worthless because the ending has changed irrevocably for the worst. Or maybe he's able to change the ending so that Elizabeth gets to live and George feels better because he was able to make a difference for someone, even if it wasn't Fred."

"What if he's not able to make a difference at all?" Elizabeth asked. Her ending had been at the back of her mind since George had given her the book to read. Was it inevitable that she had been created for one purpose? What would that do to George? Hermione and Ginny exchanged a look.

"That would be…bad." Ginny said and by the look on her face, Elizabeth could tell that it would be more than bad, it would be devastating. "But, like he said, you've already changed things. You'll think of something." Elizabeth sighed. She hoped Ginny was right.

"So, tell us, what has George been doing in the muggle world?" Hermione asked her. Elizabeth grinned and told them about her time with George. They laughed and talked for quite a while.

Eventually Ron came in search of Hermione and Ginny was tired from her game, so they separated and Elizabeth got ready for bed. She settled herself in the guest bed and turned off the light and then laid there wide-awake thinking. She could still smell George on the Harpies shirt she was wearing and she thought about what he would do if things played out the way they were supposed to. She became restless and she got up and went to see how the potion was going. She walked quietly to the room where George was sitting and she saw him leaning back in a chair with his feet on a table in front of him and he was reading. She looked closer and saw that he was reading her book, again.

"Have I been reported missing yet?" She teased. He looked up, startled.

"I thought you went to sleep."

"I tried, but my mind was too busy to shut down. I've seen too much today."

"I thought you'd already seen everything here in your imagination." He smirked at her.

"I have, but now I have to process the fact that it's all real."

"Ah Ha!" She laughed.

"There haven't been any changes, have there? Please tell me that Leah hasn't gotten into any trouble while I've been gone." She said, indicating the book that he was holding.

"There have been changes, but not where I expected." She raised an eyebrow at him. "The changes are in the beginning and middle of the book in areas that happened before we met." He looked confused. "I can't understand it."

"What kind of changes?"

"Oh, nothing big, just a few conversations between you and Leah were added. They don't really seem all that important, but they must have been added for a reason. I've been reading the book again to find out why." He flipped through a few pages to illustrate what he had been doing.

"I'm impressed that you noticed them if they're not important."

"I've read this book so many times, nothing is going to escape my notice." He told her with pride.

"It's that important to you?" She sat down next to him and made herself comfortable.

"Yes." Their conversation had started out lighthearted enough, but had taken a serious turn.

"Hermione told me that your reaction to it was the opposite of what she intended."

"I suppose. She hoped the book would help me to accept and move on. Instead, it made me want to reject what was given and try and find a better way."

"Now you're more stuck than you were before." His eyes widened. He hadn't thought of it that way.

"Only for another two weeks. Then I think I'll be able to move on."

"But if it doesn't work?" She asked, still worrying about what he would do.

"It will work." He said confidently.

"But—" She wanted him to consider what he would do if the ending stayed the same. What would that do to him? He was so invested, so wrapped up in the idea of saving her that it was going to be a terrible blow to him if he didn't. Could he take another devastating tragedy?

"It will work." He said, not letting her finish. He looked at her and she could see that he wasn't even entertaining the idea that it wouldn't. He could see that she was worried and he moved closer to her.

"Well, I would sure appreciate it if it did." She said and he laughed. Yes, she was worried about herself, too. "But first we need to think of how to change it."

They talked about what they could possibly do. George confessed that he had borrowed Harry's invisibility cloak and that was how he was able to sit in on her classes. He thought that perhaps he could hide underneath the cloak in her apartment on the night after graduation and stop Ethan from hurting her using magic.

"That won't work." She argued. "Everyone, the reader included, is going to notice something that strange going on."

"But it will save your life." George returned.

"But it will destroy the impact of the book. What's the purpose of me even going back if the book doesn't retain its message?"

"Good point. You could always stay here and we could forget about the book completely."

"But what about Leah? Ethan will kill her instead." She said seriously. "And besides, I thought that your purpose was to show that a death isn't always the best way to prove a point. You have to keep the message there and keep me alive to complete your mission, remember?"

"Okay, okay. I think that we still keep that plan in mind, just in case, though."

They continued to talk about what they could do well into the night, but they didn't have any luck. Eventually their talk turned to other things, and they talked all through the night as the potion simmered away. At one point, George let her add some antimony and stir it up, curious as to what the effects of a muggle's participation might be, but nothing happened, the potion continued to bubble just as it had before. George looked slightly disappointed but Elizabeth was elated that she had been able to be involved in magic of any kind, even if it was just stirring a pot.


	6. Choose

When the sun began to rise in the morning, Ginny came into the room to take a shift watching the potion. She was surprised to see Elizabeth and George laughing.

"What are you doing up?" She asked Elizabeth.

"She was just telling me a delightful story about a bowl of water, a feather and a can of shaving cream." George told her, still laughing. Ginny surveyed them both.

"Didn't you sleep?"

"No, I wasn't tired." Elizabeth answered, giving a big yawn. She suddenly felt exhausted. "I think I might try to get a little sleep now, if that's okay." She looked at the both of them. Ginny shrugged her shoulders. George grinned at her. She took that to mean that she was fine to go, so she went up to the room Ginny had shown her earlier and flopped down on the bed. She had only been there for a second when George came into the room and flopped down next to her.

"Thank you for keeping me company."

"Sure." She said, eyes closed. She was already close to sleep. As she drifted off, she was vaguely aware that George was still beside her, but she was too tired to care.

The light shining through the window woke her later. She could tell that a few hours had passed by the angle of the sun coming through the curtains. She wanted to get up and move around a little but as she became more aware of her surroundings, she realized that she was pinned under George's arm. He had fallen asleep next to her shortly after she had, and she had woken up to him spooning her, his arm resting over top of her. It wasn't at all unpleasant, so she lay there unmoving for a little while. She didn't want to wake him. She closed her eyes again and enjoyed the quiet. She heard the door creek open and Ginny said, "you're awake." Elizabeth was about to reply, but it was George who answered her.

"Yeah. Thanks for letting us sleep." Elizabeth's eyes snapped open and she adjusted so that she could look at George, who made no attempt to move his arm off her.

"How long have you been awake? I was waiting for you to wake up so that I could move."

"For a little while. How long have you been awake? I didn't want to disturb you, either." They laughed at each other. George propped himself up on an elbow and looked down at her. "I think we may have wasted much of your last day here." He told her, also noting the sky.

"Sleeping is never a waste."

"But we're running out of time and I'm sure there are other things you wanted to see while you're here."

"We wouldn't be able to see everything, anyway."

"You're taking this better than I thought you would."

"Well, that's partly because I don't want to get too attached to anything here when I won't be coming back."

"And the other part?"

"I like sleeping." She shrugged. Ginny coughed and the two of them looked up at her. They were doing it again, forgetting that they weren't alone. Elizabeth was suddenly aware of her position. She wriggled her way out of George's arm and got up, tripping over a blanket on her way out of the bed. She looked at Ginny, who was still watching them. "Nothing happened, I swear." Elizabeth told her. George burst out laughing.

"There you go again, worrying about something that you don't need to worry about." Elizabeth shot him a dirty look, which didn't stop the laughing. Ginny didn't comment, but did offer Elizabeth some shampoo and soap in case she wanted to shower, which Elizabeth gladly accepted. She felt much better after she was clean, even though she had to put on the clothes she had worn the day before. She carried George's Harpies shirt out to the living room where he was sitting with Ginny and Harry, and to her surprise, Ron and Hermione as well. They were all looking serious when she came into the room and she apologized for interrupting and turned to go.

"Please stay, we weren't talking about anything important." Hermione said, but she glanced to the others in the room as she said it, indicating to Elizabeth that they had been talking about something important, but they didn't want her to know about it. "Ron and I were just about to go, but we wanted to say goodbye before you left. It's been lovely meeting you."

"You too." Elizabeth told her, and she gave Hermione a hug. Ron gave her an awkward hug and he and Hermione shot George a look before walking out the door. He shrugged and they left. Harry told them that they still had some time before the potion would be ready and George suggested that Elizabeth pick one more place that she'd like to visit before they came back to take the potion and return Elizabeth to her own world. She told him that she'd like to visit the Three Broomsticks in Hogsmead. George grinned and then took her hand and they apparated to the small village, just outside the pub. They went in together and George got her a butterbeer. They found a table that wasn't being used.

"Now, are you going to tell me what you were all talking about when I walked into the room earlier?" Elizabeth questioned him. He looked at her closely for a moment before answering.

"I don't think I should. Perhaps in the future, but not now."

"Will you tell me if everything's okay? You weren't talking about how the potion went wrong and I can't go home, were you?" George grinned at her.

"Unfortunately not. If you'd like I could arrange an accident to the potion so that we'd have to start over."

"That's tempting, but I think I should get back to finish out my semester. And I'm too distracted here. If we're going to think up a plan, I'm going to have be somewhere less exciting."

"Oh yes, I can see how this pub that caters mostly to school children would be distracting." He joked.

"Laugh if you want, but I'm having the time of my life. Why don't you tell me about some of the things you did in this pub while you were at school and really make my day?" He laughed, but he told her some funny stories of his adventures with Fred in that very room. They ended up sitting there talking for quite a while. Finally, George decided that it was probably time for them to head back to see how the potion was coming along. They walked out the door and apparated back to Harry and Ginny's.

The potion was ready when they made it back. George took a small vial of it and put it in his pocked.

"Would you mind keeping the rest of it somewhere, just until this is all over? Just in case?" George asked Harry. He nodded. Elizabeth gave both Harry and Ginny a hug as she said her goodbyes and thanked them for everything. Ginny held on just a little longer than Elizabeth was expecting and Elizabeth was sure that Ginny was wondering if Elizabeth was going to make it though whatever was coming for her. She was wondering that herself. Finally, George took her hand and they left, apparating to George's flat. He wanted to talk to her alone before they went back to Elizabeth's world.

"This potion helps me to apparate into your world." He explained. "It…magnifies my concentration, I suppose you could say, helping me to concentrate on where we want to go and also when in time and makes it possible to go outside the realm of where we can normally apparate such as worlds that aren't real. But it also makes the journey less taxing on my body. I'm going to give you some too, but only to keep you conscious during the journey. It won't be as bad as when we came here. But before we take it, I wanted to ask you…" he paused and looked at her with a serious expression on his face.

"What is it?"

"I wanted to ask you if you don't want to just stay here? You don't have to go back, you would be safe here." He had joked about her staying before, but there was no joking this time. He was looking at her intently.

"George, you know I can't stay. Ethan could kill Leah. I can't let him do that."

"He could kill you." George said softly. She knew this. She knew that there was a strong possibility that it would happen, but she couldn't let someone else die in her place.

"I can't just sit by and let something happen to Leah, that would be as bad as killing her myself. We have to think of something."

"You're sure?" It was a little unnerving to hear him giving her the option to escape her fate the easy way. All along he had been so sure that they would be able to make a difference and now it sounded as though he wasn't sure.

"Yes." She said with determination. If he was going to have a moment of weakness, she would be the strong one. He saw the resolve in her eyes and he was unable to stop himself from grabbing her and kissing her. He wound his hands in her hair and crushed her against him and for a moment, just a moment, she kissed him back just as fiercely. Then she pulled back.

"I had to do that just once." He said, grinning. She opened her mouth to say something, but he continued on, "Are you ready to go back now, then?"

"Yes." She sighed. It was a good thing he hadn't kissed her before he had given her the option of staying. She may have decided to stay after all. But instead, he took her hand and they each had a swallow of the potion. She closed her eyes and braced herself and suddenly they were squeezed into nothingness. The potion was working, she wasn't feeling the same amount of pressure she had felt when they left her world.

They arrived with an incredibly loud bang and she looked around to see that they were in a covered parking lot and all the car alarms around them had gone off when they had arrived. The two of them hurried away as fast as they could, not wanting to have to answer any awkward questions if someone saw them.

"That was quite an entrance." Elizabeth joked.

"Yes. All that pressure builds up around us and needs an outlet just like we do. I don't know if you noticed what happened to my shop when we arrived there." She remembered how all the windows had been broken and all the items on the shelves had been knocked over. She grinned. That must have been quite a shock to all the people who had been there. "When I first came, I apparated to a park. Luckily it was quite dark and there were only a couple of people there, but I had to oblivate the memory of my arrival out of them."

George recognized where they had arrived and they walked back to her apartment slowly, enjoying the evening. It was just beginning to get dark.

"I think," he said, "that we can use my idea of using magic to keep you from getting hurt. It just needs some improvements."

"You think that we can pull it off without arousing suspicion?" She asked dubiously.

"I think so. I'll have to work on it. We may have to spend some time together working out how. A lot of time." He winked at her and she laughed. He took her hand as they walked and she didn't pull away. They made it to the front of her apartment building and George stopped.

"I don't think I can walk you all the way to your door. I don't know if Leah is up there since things have changed, and I don't want her to see me. I can't be included in the book." She nodded.

"I want to talk to her anyway, and you're not invited for that conversation. You'll just have to read about it later." She smirked at him and he laughed. He let her hand go reluctantly and she went in the door and up two flights of stairs to get to her apartment. She was tired. It had been a busy two days. She had a lot on her mind as she climbed the stairs, mostly things that she had seen and done while she had been with George. And, of course, graduation was only a couple of weeks away. Now that she was away from the world of magic where distraction met her at every corner, she had some quiet time to contemplate all she had read. But she didn't want to. Perhaps she would think things through after a good night's sleep.

She pulled out her key but found the door unlocked when she tried it. Leah must have made it back from visiting her mother. She wondered if Leah had actually called Ethan and broken up with him, or if she had changed her mind. Elizabeth wished she had asked George to read the book to see if it mentioned what she had done.

"Leah?" She called out as she opened the door. She heard a noise in one of the back rooms, but Leah didn't answer right away. Elizabeth turned to close the door, but was pushed back very forcefully and she tripped and fell on her backside, surprised. She scrambled to get up when she saw who it was.

It was Ethan. He looked livid and she could smell the alcohol on him from feet away. Elizabeth's blood ran cold.

"Where's Leah?" He demanded.

Elizabeth had wondered what she would do when she was face to face with Ethan. Would she face her death head on now that she knew it was a strong possibility? Would she leave Leah to fend for herself? She had hoped that she would be prepared no matter what, that she would have a plan and that a better alternative would have been arranged. But it wasn't. George wouldn't have read about Ethan's sudden arrival. There was no one to protect her, no one to save her, she had to choose.

And she did choose. Without even thinking about it.

"You can't see her." She told him. His eyes were wild and he tried to push past her to look in Leah's bedroom, but she stood in his way. "Ethan, you need to leave. Talk to her when you haven't been drinking."

"Get out of my way!" He roared at her, but she wouldn't stop trying to keep him from the bedrooms. He pushed her away and she hit the wall hard, but she didn't let that stop her. She grabbed his arm and tried to pull him back. The thought crossed her mind that because she had changed things, perhaps it was Leah who would die in this alternate ending, and she didn't want that to happen. Ethan tried to swat her off him, but she held firm, digging her fingernails into his arm. He yelled out in pain and punched her in her temple, causing her to let go and fall to the ground. She was stunned. She could only see black for a second until things came back into focus. She saw that Ethan had made it to Leah's bedroom and opened the door. Elizabeth got back to her feet, hoping to stop him from hurting Leah if she could. He looked around and saw that Leah wasn't there and then came back out to the living room and he swung at her again. She tried to ward it off, but he was so much stronger than her and his fist connected with her side, causing her to fall again. He kicked Elizabeth in the side as she lay on the floor.

"Was it you? Did you tell Leah to break up with me?" He asked as he kicked her again, his words slurred, his voice filled with rage. "Why don't you mind your own business? I'll tell her what to do, not you."

"Stop." She tried to tell him, but she had no breath and it wasn't audible. It wouldn't have stopped him anyway. He kicked her again and again, and just before he kicked her in the head causing everything to go dark, she hoped that she had done enough.


	7. Come With Me

Elizabeth woke up in a hospital bed.

She heard the beeping of a heart monitor and could smell strong disinfectants before she opened her eyes and she wondered if she was in a mental hospital after everything she thought she had gone through over the past few days. Perhaps she had started to crack under the pressure of having to finish her degree and had just imagined George and had one amazing episode. But then she tried to move and her entire body felt like it was on fire. She groaned out loud.

"Elizabeth!" She heard Leah's voice. Elizabeth opened her eyes and saw her best friend sitting in a chair near her. Leah looked like she had been crying, her mascara had run down her face, but she looked like she was unhurt. She rushed over to Elizabeth's side.

"Are you okay?" Elizabeth asked her, and Leah started laughing even as more tears came down her face.

"Are you insane? You're the one lying in a hospital bed and you're asking if I'm okay?"

"Yes, and I'm serious. Are you okay?" Elizabeth scanned her friend quickly to see if she could spot any injuries, but she appeared to be unhurt.

"Yes, I'm fine! I should be the one asking if you're okay."

"I've been better." A doctor came in at the point and Leah excused herself to find a restroom. The doctor checked her over and told her about her various injuries, three broken ribs, a concussion, some fractured fingers and bruising all over. All in all, she wondered how she had escaped with so few injuries. The doctor told her she only had to spend a couple of days in the hospital and then she would be okay to go home. The doctor left and Elizabeth waited patiently for Leah to come back so that she could find out what had happened. While she was sitting there, she thought she saw something move in the corner of the room, but Leah came in and when Elizabeth turned to get a better look, whatever it was had gone. Leah looked better, she had cleaned her face and was wearing a smile.

"What happened, Leah? The last thing I remember was Ethan…" She didn't want to go back to that moment, so her voice trailed off.

"It's all my fault, Lizzy. I'm so sorry. I was in the kitchen when you came in and I heard Ethan come in and I was hoping that you could talk him into leaving. But I heard him hit you and I…I don't know…I guess I froze. I couldn't think for a second." Elizabeth's mind went back to George's book and how Leah had been trapped by her memories of her father hurting her and she had been unable to move, and she understood what Leah was trying to say.

"Then I heard him yelling at you and I kind of snapped out of it. I grabbed the frying pan." Elizabeth grinned. Leah had found a weapon to defend herself? That didn't sound like her at all.

"You didn't."

"Yes, I did! I snuck up behind him as he was kicking you and I hit him as hard as I could."

"What!?"

"Twice! The first one didn't take." The two of them laughed. That must have been satisfying. Elizabeth wished she had been awake to witness that.

"You saved my life, Leah." Elizabeth told her as soon as their laughter subsided.

"No, I didn't."

"Yes, you did." She said emphatically. She knew without a doubt that Leah had saved her life and she would forever be grateful to her.

"Well, you saved my life. You stopped Ethan from finding me. I can't believe that you were willing to let him hit you to keep him away from me."

"I guess that makes us even."

"Not quite. I'm a little in your debt. I suppose I'll have to cater to your every whim until you recover, or something." She said indicating Elizabeth's injuries.

"Don't worry about it. I'd get the crap beaten out of me any time for you." Elizabeth joked. "Is Ethan in jail?" She asked wanting to know if it was all over, if both of them were safe now.

"He will be when he wakes up. Apparently I hit him harder than I thought."

The two of them talked until Elizabeth started to get drowsy from the medication they gave her. Leah said that she would be back the next day and she left. Elizabeth started to drift off to sleep as soon as Leah was gone, but she felt someone take her hand before she fell asleep.

She woke up in the middle of the night when some monitors went off in the room next door and the nurses started rushing around. She was startled to discover that she still felt like someone was holding her hand but she couldn't see anyone there. Then it hit her.

"George?" She whispered. She used her injured hand to feel around until she felt a bump that felt like his head resting on her bed. He must have fallen asleep under Harry's invisibility cloak. She moved the silky invisible fabric around until she was able to get it partly off his face and she could see that, yes, he was asleep. She chuckled to herself and then tried to go back to sleep. The problem was, now that she was awake, she was having trouble going back to sleep. She was in pain and uncomfortable with the wires attached to her and she started to think about what had happened and she knew that she wouldn't be going to sleep any time soon. George, however, was having no trouble sleeping. She felt him adjust slightly and the adjustment somehow made breathing a bit harder for him, because he began to snore, loudly. Elizabeth was worried that the noise would bring someone to her room. She tried nudging him a little to get him back in a position where he wouldn't snore, but it didn't work. She nudged him a second time, but must have pushed a little too hard because he slipped off the bed and hit the floor.

"Hey!" he said in surprise.

"Shhhh." Elizabeth tried to get him to be quiet before he gave himself away. He jumped up and looked at her.

"You're awake!"

"Yes, I'm awake. Sorry you fell, I was trying to get you to be quiet."

"Be quiet?"

"Yes, you were snoring so loudly that I thought you were going to alert the entire hospital to your presence."

"I don't snore." He said indignantly.

"Yeah, okay." She rolled her eyes.

"How do you feel?" He asked, taking her hand and sitting back down next to her.

"Terrible. But to be feeling anything at all is wonderful." He smiled a luminously happy smile.

"You're alive!"

"Yes, I am. But…" She wondered if it was all over or if Ethan was still someone she had to watch out for.

"But nothing. Ethan doesn't try to bother Leah or you again."

"How do you know that?"

"The book." He pulled out his tiny copy and handed it to her. "I read it today while I was waiting for Leah to leave. The ending has sorted itself out. Leah has had her break-though, or at least has started down that road."

"May I?" She asked holding up the book. George nodded. She opened the book from the beginning and began reading. George, who had assumed she would start toward the end where the changes had been made, sighed and then tried to settle himself so that he could go back to sleep. He covered himself with the invisibility cloak and soon his breathing was deep and even.

She didn't notice when he had gone back to sleep, she was wrapped up in the book. It began with Leah's childhood and told about her father and the abuse she had gone through. Then followed her as she went to college and met Elizabeth and they became friends. This was all stuff that Elizabeth remembered, but she was surprised at what was included in the book. There were small conversations that Elizabeth had thought were insignificant but had meant a lot to Leah, times when Elizabeth was relentlessly optimistic or when she was particularly kind, anything that had bolstered Leah's self esteem or had shown her that she was good enough. Elizabeth hadn't known how deep Leah's self-doubt and fear had gone. It was all due to her father, who had flown off the handle every time she had done anything wrong, even simple little things that should have elicited a laugh instead of a smack to the head. Elizabeth, over the four years they had known each other, had helped to alleviate some of that.

Then she came to the events of the previous evening when Elizabeth came home. She cringed when she read about Ethan hitting her. Leah had heard him hit her, and it had caused her to freeze, just like it had in the first ending. But then Ethan had yelled at her. "I'll tell her what to do, not you." Those words had reminded Leah of all the times Elizabeth had told her to stand up for herself, to have faith in herself and she had snapped to attention. She realized that Ethan was hurting Elizabeth and she picked up the frying, the only thing she thought would be able to stop him. She snuck up behind him and hit him, but the first hit hadn't been hard enough and he turned to look at her. She hit him harder the second time and he fell. She called the police and they had come to get Ethan while the ambulance took Elizabeth to the hospital. Leah had wanted to go with Elizabeth, but she had to stay behind and give a statement to the police. It was close to two hours later before she could make it to Elizabeth's side.

The changes hadn't ended there. The book now reflected all the changes that had happened. Leah had realized that she didn't have to be frozen with fear when she was confronted with her worst fears. She began to heal faster after the episode than she had in years of therapy. She became a stronger person. Matt wasn't included in this ending, but Leah eventually found someone.

The tone of the book had changed slightly, but it was still impactful and deep and the ending was still touching. Elizabeth sighed when she finished reading and finally felt tired. She fell asleep with the book on her chest.

"You didn't stay awake all night reading that did you, young lady?" Elizabeth was woken up by a nurse checking all her levels. She groggily opened her eyes.

"I did."

"You're supposed to take it easy, give that brain of yours a rest. A concussion is a serious thing."

"Yeah." She said. Her head hurt more now than it had last night.

"Oh! I didn't know she wrote another book. Was it good?" Elizabeth was confused for a second and then she looked at the author of the book and smiled. It was _The_ author. How had she not noticed that before? It was no wonder a character from Harry Potter had come to save her.

"It was very good."

"I'll have to pick it up at the bookstore later." Elizabeth doubted she would be able to find it, but didn't try to dissuade her. She finished checking Elizabeth over and left. George peaked out from beneath the cloak. She held out the book to him a little reluctantly.

"Thank you, George, for everything."

"If you finished that book, you'll know that I didn't do anything, it was all you."

"You initiated all the changes, George. Some of those later conversations I had with Leah were because I was thinking about things you had said." There was a pause, neither of them knowing quite what to say, which was a first. The nurse came in and put a breakfast tray in front of her and left again. Elizabeth looked at the tray with distaste.

"That looks unappetizing." George commented.

"Do you mean disgusting? Then yes, yes it does." She pushed the tray away. She looked at George and then down at her broken hand. "Are you happy with the changes that were made?" She asked him.

"Yes."

"I suppose that means that you'll be going soon." She was actually surprised that he was still there. Now that he knew that everything was going to be okay, she would have thought that he would have gone home. The thought left her feeling depressed. It was all over and she would never see him again. Despite her best efforts, George had gained her trust and they had become friends. Perhaps a little more than friends, or it might have developed into more if George wasn't with Angelina. And now he was going to leave and she was never going to see him again. She felt like she wanted to cry. If she started crying, could she blame it on the pain?

"Yes." He answered, not sounding sad about it at all. She must have imagined their friendship.

"Please send my thanks to Harry and Ginny and Ron and Hermione."

"Why don't you tell them yourself?" She looked up at him and he was smiling.

"What?"

"Elizabeth, I want you to come back with me." He told her. Her heart began racing. Go back with him? If only...

"I don't know if that's such a good idea." She told him. He frowned at her.

"Why not? You don't have a job lined up, do you?"

"No, but I—"

"You don't have any family around, do you?"

"No, but—"

"Did you decide to go on to graduate school?"

"Not exactly."

"Did you have a boyfriend who's important enough to stick around for?"

"I don't. Thanks for the reminder of how great I'm doing. Perhaps Leah should have let Ethan take me out and put me out of my misery." She joked. He didn't look amused. "Too soon?" He shook his head at her. "In case you haven't noticed, I don't have any of those things in your world either and there happens to be a few a few additional problems with going with you as well."

"Such as?"

"George, I'm a muggle."

"Are you?" He raised an eyebrow at her as though this was news to him.

"Of course I am."

"Are you sure about that?" He was still looking at he as though he knew something she didn't.

"Well, I was…until right now. Why are you looking at me like that?"

"You know, it's funny how kids in my world discover that they have magic. Some of them do something inexplicable, some have magic relatives who know how to draw it out of them, and some have no idea until they get their letter to Hogwarts."

"Well I haven't had any of those things happen, so…"

"Are you sure?"

"George, if you know something I don't, you should just tell me." She was starting to get impatient to know what he was hiding.

"I asked Hermione what would happen if a muggle were to help with the making of a potion. She said that the potion wouldn't work." Elizabeth's eyes widen as she took in what he had said.

"Did you notice if the potion was any less effective than the first time you used it?"

"It seemed exactly the same to me. And I thought to myself, if the potion worked fine, and I know that you helped with it because I had been secretly hoping that your participation would ruin the potion and I'd get to keep you in my world for another couple of days, then that must mean that you have some special hidden talents that you weren't aware of."

"How can that be? I haven't noticed anything my entire life."

"My guess is that it's because this world doesn't have magic. You had to come to mine in order to find out. And you'll have to come back to my world to use it."

"When did you have a chance to ask Hermione about that?"

"While you were showering and everyone had gathered to tell me to keep you in our world instead of brining you back."

"They told you to stop me from coming back? Why would they do that?" Now she knew why they had all gathered to talk while she had been showering.

"They were worried about both of us. They didn't want you to die at the hands of Ethan and they didn't want me to lose anyone else." There was a pause in the conversation as they both thought this through. Then George asked her, "Did you have any other objections?"

"Well, if I go with you, I'll have no job, no magical training, no money, no belongings, no place to live, no proof that I'm a real person, and no way to communicate with my family and friends here." George laughed at her long list of reasons not to go with him.

"We can sort all of that out. The real question is, do you want to come or not?" He looked at her searchingly, trying to see if she felt the same way about him as he did about her.

It all came down to that one question. Did she want to leave her world and everything she had ever known and loved to go with George to a place where her imagination had become reality?

"Yes, I want to come." She said.

"Really?" His face lit up.

"Yes."

"Excellent. Let's go." He reached for his wand and grabbed her good hand, but she pulled away.

"George, I can't go right now. I need some time to…arrange things. I just spent four years trying to get my degree. It might be pointless now, but I'm not going anywhere until I've officially graduated. Plus, I'm going to have to think up some elaborate lies for my family and friends. And I'll need at least some of my things."

"I see. How long do you think you'll need?"

"I'm suppose to graduate in two weeks. That should be enough time."

"Very well. I think that perhaps I'll return to my world for those two weeks and see if I can't get some things arranged for you."

"Okay." Her heart was beating very quickly as she thought about the decision she had just made.

"Do lots of healing while I'm away." He told her and he winked as he apparated out of the room.

The next two weeks went by very quickly. Elizabeth was discharged from the hospital the next day and told to take it easy. Leah was there to help her as she made her way back home, learning how to maneuver with the least amount of pain. She was able to go to her classes, thankfully they were all almost at an end. She took her finals and handed in her final papers and finished out her undergraduate degree. She didn't want to go to the ceremony, she had decided to skip it, and used her injuries as an excuse not to go. One could argue that it wasn't an excuse, she was having a hard time breathing without pain and she didn't want to have to sit in a hard chair for an indeterminate amount of time in pain just to walk across a stage for one minute. Instead, she stayed home and went through her things, decided what she absolutely couldn't do without and what was going to be left behind. She hoped George would help her bring her things with them somehow.

She told everyone she knew that she was going to teach English in a remote village in China. It would explain why she wasn't around and people would just think that she was having a hard time communicating while she was there. Leah was devastated. She had wanted them to continue living together and was surprised and disappointed by the suddenness of Elizabeth's news. They went out together once more the night after graduation. The entire night Elizabeth thought about what might have happened if George hadn't shown up outside her apartment that night. She would be celebrating with Matt, Leah and Ethan. They would have gone back to the apartment where Elizabeth would have unknowingly spent her final moments. She shuddered a little as she thought about it.

And then, the next day, George was there. Elizabeth had made sure that Leah was away. George helped Elizabeth shrink her the things that she wanted to take with her so that they all fit in one bag and she left Leah a letter and her keys, then George took her hand and they disapperated.


	8. An Enigma

When they arrived in George's world, the first thing they did was visit Harry and Ginny. George had told everyone that Elizabeth was safe and they had all read the changes to the book by the time they saw her, so no explanations were needed, there was just a sense of relief that she was really alive and that she had decided to come back with George. Her broken bones were still mending, and her bruises hadn't completely healed, so she must have looked moderately horrible. She could tell by the looks on Harry and Ginny's faces when they first saw her that she didn't look great. But it didn't matter. They were happy to see her. And Ron and Hermione were happy to see her when they arrived to see her a little while afterwards.

"What are your plans now that you're here?" Ginny asked her.

"I have absolutely no idea." She confessed. She couldn't imagine what she could possibly do, she had no skills at all in this world of magic, she wasn't even sure if she wasn't really a muggle and George had been mistaken. "I suppose the first thing I need to do is to find out if I really can…I mean do…um, if I really am like all of you."

"That should be easy. George, take her to Olivanders tomorrow." Hermione instructed him and then turned back to Elizabeth. "If you're able to use magic, you'll be able to find a wand. I really do think that you can. That potion that helped you get back to your world would have been completely ruined if you didn't have some ability."

"But my world doesn't have magic."

"That you know of." George corrected her.

"Well, that's just my point. If my world had magic, and I did too, I would have known, right? I would have been contacted somehow." She argued. George smiled. He was happy that she was still going to challenge him, that nothing had changed since she had decided to come live in his world.

"I think the most likely explanation is that you came from another world, and being able to come here is a little bit of magic on its own. You might be the first person who can trace their own origin of magic back to the very beginning. That's actually pretty special." Hermione sounded a bit awed.

"But finding out so late is a huge disadvantage. Even if I do have the ability, I don't have any training. No one is going to want to hire me if I can't perform a simple spell, even if I do have a wand." She lamented. She was probably going to have to find a job as a muggle, and that would be hard to find too, because all she had was an undergraduate degree without experience, and it wasn't even from this world.

"Don't worry, Elizabeth, I think that you'll pick it all up rather quickly. You love reading books. You'll be able to read your way through seven years of magical training quickly and have it all figured out soon enough." George tried to reassure her. And it was true. She did love reading, and she couldn't imagine a more compelling subject than magic. She had wanted to be a witch from the first time she picked up a Harry Potter book and that would be enough to propel her through her studies with enthusiasm. She smiled as she thought about it.

"You and Hermione are the only ones I've ever seen smile when thinking about reading and schoolwork." Ron observed, sounding like he couldn't understand what could possibly make them smile about any of it. Hermione rolled her eyes at him.

"That's probably because it seems like work to you. To me magic the most amazing and impossible thing and to find out it's real is a dream come true." Elizabeth said dreamily. Hermione laughed.

"I suppose that comes from growing up in a muggle family." She observed. "Ron has no idea what it's like to be without it."

"Well, I do." George said with a grin. "I had a few weeks where I watched Elizabeth go about her muggle way, and it looked exhausting." She laughed. "Really, you just need to learn magic so that you can have a break."

"I'll try my best." She joked back.

"And in regards to a job, I'd like to offer you a position in my shop. I could use more help and you don't have to have any particular sort of training to sell items, you just have to be able to count and lift heavy objects if you can't use a wand." Elizabeth looked at him gratefully. That would do just fine until she could learn enough magic to get a job in something she was interested in. Now she just needed…so many things. She was a bit overwhelmed by the thought of all the things she needed.

"I can't even do that at the moment, lift heavy objects, I mean." She touched her ribs lightly. They were still painful, though it was getting easier to breath without pain.

"You're going to make a lousy employee, but I think I'll still take the chance." George teased.

"And we'd like to offer you a place to stay until you can find a place of your own." Hermione told her. "I thought perhaps I could help you while you learn magic, and Ron and I can help you with things until you've recovered." Elizabeth got up and went over and hugged her without saying a word, making everyone else laugh. It was more than Elizabeth had hoped, having someone as smart as Hermione to be around to help her with anything she couldn't sort out on her own. "I suppose that means yes." Hermione said.

"Yes, please." Elizabeth replied. She had a job and a place to stay. Everything else could be arranged and fixed in time. "You've all been so kind." She said humbly. "How can I ever thank you?"

"Well, it is our fault that you're here with absolutely no idea of what you should be doing." George pointed out. "I would say it's all mine, but they all wanted you here nearly as much as I did."

They all talked for a while and when it had gotten late, they separated. George was ready to go with Elizabeth to Hermione and Ron's house, but Hermione told him that Elizabeth would be fine and he could see her the next day, and then she dismissed him. He looked slightly offended, but didn't argue and he disapperated to his own flat. Before he went, Elizabeth handed him her muggle money and asked if he could change it to wizard money for her. He told her that he would and then he left. Elizabeth held on to Hermione's arm as she and Ron disapperated to their house. Ron joined them as they showed Elizabeth to the spare room, but then disappeared while Hermione talked to her.

"When George came back a two weeks ago, I told him I wanted to offer you a place to stay if you agreed to come. I initiated this whole thing, unintentionally of course, and I wanted to have a part in helping you with the transition."

"You've already helped. I know it was just a book to you, but it was my life, and it would have ended if George hadn't come. It's thanks to you that he did."

"I just couldn't stand to see him the way that he was. He wasn't getting over Fred's death. Of course, my solution was to give him a book. I should have known that he would take action."

"Don't be too hard on him." Elizabeth smiled. Hermione smiled back. Then she left the room for a few minutes and came back with her arms loaded with books.

"Ron told me I was crazy to keep all of these. But I told him they would come in handy one day." They were Hermione's school books. Elizabeth picked up the Standard Book of Spells grade one and began reading right away. Hermione smiled and left her to it.

Elizabeth could hardly believe her luck. She started reading and was soon immersed in what she was reading, oblivious to all around her. Hours passed while she read through three books and memorized spells to try when, if, she got a wand. She was reading about the proper pronunciation of Leviosa (and chuckling to herself as she wondered if Ron had ever forgiven Hermione for correcting his mistakes) when George came into the room.

"What are you doing here?"

"I told you I was going to take you to Olivanders today." He said, wondering why she was so surprised to see him.

"Today? What time is it?" She asked, rubbing her eyes.

"It's 9:00 a.m. I thought you'd want to go over as soon as it opened."

"Oh! Yes, yes I do. Just give me a minute to get ready." She stood up looking completely disoriented and looked around for her bag. George watched her with an amused look on his face. She found her bag, pulled some clean clothes from it and had started to take off her shirt before she noticed that he was still in the room. "A little privacy, please." She said. He laughed and left the room to wait for her in the sitting room. She came out looking much better.

"Sorry about that."

"Did you read all night?"

"Maybe." She admitted. He laughed. George took her hand and they apparated into Diagon Alley. They arrived safely and headed over to Olivanders wand shop. It was very quiet inside, as Elizabeth had expected. She looked around at the shelves and stacks of wands and wondered which one was meant for her, or if any of them were. Mr. Olivander came out from behind one of the shelves and looked the two of them over.

"Mr. Weasley, is there a problem with your wand?" He asked quietly.

"Oh, no, it's in perfect condition. I'm actually here today to help this young lady get her first wand." Mr. Olivander looked Elizabeth over, surprised.

"First wand? You look a bit old to just be starting out, miss."

"It's a long story." She said, not wanting to explain. He looked her over without saying anything for a moment, and she looked him directly in the eye, almost daring him to ask her a question.

He finally cocked his head to the side and said, "It will probably be a particular kind of wand for you, then." He began pulling wands from the shelves and having her try them out. The first wand did absolutely nothing. She held it and she didn't feel anything from it, she waved it and it did nothing. Olivander looked at her and George with a small amount of skepticism. "Are you certain you are in need of a wand?" He asked her.

She wasn't sure at all, but George answered with a resounding "Yes!" and Mr. Olivander handed her another wand. The second wand she was handed had the same response to her touch, nothing. But the third wand felt slightly warmer and when she waved it, it gave off a few weak sparks. But it didn't matter how weak, she had done something! Her heart soared and Olivander look of skepticism was changed to one of curiosity. He went back to the shelves and pulled more wands and she tried them all. Most of them had absolutely no reaction at all, but a few of them reacted weakly to her. Elizabeth began to get discouraged the longer they were there, but Olivander, now that he knew that Elizabeth did posses the ability to do magic, seemed to be having a wonderful time.

After about an hour, Elizabeth sat down on the only stool in the shop while Mr. Olivander went to search for more wands that might suit her.

"This isn't working, George."

"Nonsense. You can do it, you've made some of them work, you just need the right one."

"Perhaps I'm as close to a squib as I can get. Maybe we should just give it up and go."

"Absolutely not. You're getting a wand today if you have to try every single one."

"Every single one? That would take ages, look at all those boxes."

"Not to mention the very impressive window display." George joked. They both turned to look at the lone wand in the window. Elizabeth laughed but remembered the day that she and George had stood outside while she lamented the fact that she would never need a wand. Had the wand shuddered that day or had she been imagining it? The more she thought about it, the more interested she became. When Mr. Olivander came back, she asked him if she could try it.

"That wand? I'm afraid that wand isn't functional. It's for display only."

"Why isn't it functional?"

"Just like you, that is a long story." He said smiling.

"So, she can't even try it?" George asked, now as curious as she was.

"I suppose it wouldn't hurt, but I assure you, the wand won't work." Olivander went to the wand on the cushion and brought it over. He noticed that it had been a while since he had dusted it, so he polished it and then presented it to Elizabeth to take. She took it from him and immediately the wand warmed in her hand and light emanated from the tip. She waved it in the air slightly and a rainbow of sparks shot from it. She was so startled that she dropped it.

"Oops." She said. George and Mr. Olivander both stood with mouths wide open.

"I believe I'd like to hear your very long story, my dear." Olivander said as soon as he had regained his composure.

"As long as you'll tell me about this wand." She countered. He nodded and, though she didn't want too many people to know her story, she described for him how she had been a book character and had somehow made it out of the book to come to their world (she didn't tell George's part in the story just in case). Olivander nodded as she finished.

"Yes, I see how that would make you unusual enough for this wand. You see, this wand was made by my great grandfather. He was a renowned wandmaker in his time, he had the reputation of finding the most unusual and rare materials for the wands he made. He traveled to Greece and while there, he sought out the Sphynx to see if he could obtain hair from her tail to use in his wands.  
He finally came across the Sphynx who listened to his request and told him if he could answer a riddle, he could take three hairs, and three hairs only. If he could not answer the riddle, the Sphynx would tear him to pieces. My great grandfather agreed to the terms and listened to the riddle. 'what walks on four legs in the morning, two in the afternoon, and three in the evening?'"

"Man, of course." Elizabeth answered at once, nodding at the famous riddle. Once again Olivander and George stared at her. "Well it's not exactly a secret, is it? Oedipus answered that question about 2500 years ago." They continued to stare at her. "Doesn't anyone read Sophocles anymore?" Silence. "Oh, never mind. Continue, please." She said.

"Oh…um…yes. So, my great grandfather also guessed 'man' and the Sphynx agreed to give him the three hairs. He took the hairs and fashioned three wands with them. One made of Ash, one made of Yew, and the third made of Acacia." He said indicating the wand that Elizabeth was now holding. "He kept the one made of Yew for himself and it's said that he was quite skilled with it. The other two never found their true owner. Though many have tried, neither have once worked for a single witch or wizard, until now. This one has been decorating this shop window since it was made, and the one made of Ash is in the window of the shop in Hogsmead."

"I guess it was just waiting for the right witch." George said.

"Indeed. It shouldn't be surprising, the Sphynx its self is an enigma, hard to solve and the wood of this wand is very unusual. Acacia creates tricky wands that often refuse to produce magic for any but their owner."

"You're also an enigma." George teased her. "This wand is perfect for you."

"Acacia wands also withhold their best effects from all but the most gifted." Olivander told them. "I don't think that you need to worry about your ability, despite the fact that you discovered it so late. Perhaps your abilities remained hidden until you were able to come to our world." It was just what George had suggested and it made her feel a lot better about herself. She thanked him for the wand and for the story and then left him to find another wand for his display.

"I guess that it took a book to figure both of you out." George observed as they walked out, looking at Elizabeth as she studied her new wand. She grinned. She was happy to have a wand, to have her abilities confirmed instead of being told that she wasn't a witch.

"Now, we just have to get you some robes and then we can get to work." They went to the second-hand robe shop where she was able to find some that worked for her that didn't take too much of her meager savings. Then they went to the Weasley's Wizard Wheezes. George put her to work right away stocking shelves, helping customers. He made sure that she didn't do any really heavy lifting, not wanting to hurt her injuries any further. The work was easy, but tiring. She felt like she was able to blend into this world of magic pretty well as she worked. She looked like everyone else, it was only when she talked that people noticed that she was American and she stood out a little, but it wasn't because she had no magic training. And most people had manners enough to not comment on the bruises on her face.

At the end of the day George closed the shop and told her he had some things to do and he would take her to Hermione's, but he wanted to see her later. They apparated back to Hermione and Ron's and Elizabeth surrounded herself with books and pulled out her wand. She began trying to work the spells that she had been reading about and was soon completely immersed in her task. She started with charms. Before too long she had objects flying around the room. It was a book that hit George in the face when he stuck his head in the door.

"Oh my goodness, I'm so sorry George!" She said, making the rest of her flying objects fall to the ground. He put his hand up to his nose to see if he was bleeding, but smiled.

"I see that you're not wasting any time."

"Are you kidding, this is so much fun!" She said, sounding like a small child on Christmas morning. George laughed at her enthusiasm. She turned back to her book, but George wanted to take her out. It was her first full day in George's world and he wanted to help her celebrate. She reluctantly put down her book and went with him. She would have done better to stay with her books, though. She began to feel tired as soon as they sat down in the muggle movie George tried to surprise her with. It was quite thoughtful, he was trying to help her transition to the magic world, but she didn't even know what movie they went to see. She was asleep as soon as the lights went out. George really enjoyed it, so it wasn't a complete waste. As soon as it was over, George looked over at her and saw that she was asleep. He chuckled to himself and waited until everyone else had left the theatre, then picked her up and apparated to Ron and Hermione's where he put her in her bed. She didn't notice a thing.

"I'm so sorry about last night." She told him when she made it to work the next day.

"Not to worry, I should have realized that you needed to sleep. You did miss a great movie, however."

"I need to figure out how to fit everything I want to do into one day."

"Just leave the studying for your day off." That might have worked for him, but she was desperate to learn and catch up to everyone else around her.

"But I need to know how to do things. For example…" She levitated a box of heavy love potions to the front of the store. "What kind of employee would I be if I couldn't restock the shelves." She grinned at him, proud of herself for learning one of the most basic spells. George laughed.

"Very good. Before you know it, you'll be changing matchsticks into needles." He teased her.

"Hey, that was after one day of reading, I'll have you know. There's no need for that tone." She pretended to be offended.

"I beg your pardon. I was only trying to convey shock and awe."

"Are you sure you weren't trying to convey condescension and conceit?" She grinned at him.

He held up his hands as if to surrender. "Miss Elizabeth, I'm terribly impressed by your ability to stock my shelves. Please accept my most sincere apologies for making you believe that my compliment on your magical skill was not completely sincere." He joked. She couldn't help but laugh. "Honestly, though, that is really good after just one day."

"Thanks!" She headed off to help a waiting customer and he watched her go, smiling.


	9. The Hat

That evening George came to Ron and Hermione's to help Elizabeth with her spell work. Hermione was there to help, too and with all the support, Elizabeth made some excellent progress. Because she was able to focus on spell work and didn't have to write essays or draw diagrams, she was going to make it through much more quickly than a student at Hogwarts would. Also, she decided that there were some subjects that she would focus on much later when she had mastered the practical side of things. History of magic was something she could read about later, and she didn't have access to the Hogwarts greenhouses, so she wouldn't be able to do much for the practical side of Herbology. But she could master Charms, Transfiguration, Defense Against the Dark Arts, Astronomy, and Potions (with Hermione's help and supervision). She was especially interested in Potions. Helping to make that potion with George had been the first sign that she had some magical abilities, which made her feel kindly toward the subject. And, in the back of her mind, an idea was evolving and potions would be essential.

She knew that the best plan for her education would be to learn the subjects concurrently like they did at Hogwarts, but it would be easier for her to focus on one subject, master it and then move on to the next. She had already started on Charms, so she decided to continue on with it. She picked up things extremely quickly, so quickly, in fact, that Hermione was impressed.

"You definitely would have been sorted into Ravenclaw." She told Elizabeth as she was able to work a summoning charm after just a few tries.

"I don't think so. It would have been Gryffindor." George argued. "You read her book, she faced off against Ethan who was nearly twice her size without a second thought."

"Wouldn't that make me a Hufflepuff? I was only doing it for Leah. That would be loyalty."

"But you're the type of girl who would have tried to stand up to him no matter who he was threatening." George said. Elizabeth considered it and she might have, but she wasn't sure. She shrugged.

"Maybe. I can't honestly say."

"But look at how much you love to read and learn. Ravenclaw." Hermione said.

"Says the girl who read every text book before going to one class. Gryffindor." George countered and Hermione smiled sheepishly. He had her there.

"I suppose no one is going to argue for Slytherin?" Elizabeth asked with a grin. "I'm terribly cunning, you know." They laughed.

"Have you ever done one sneaky thing in your life?" George asked her. "When was the last time you told a lie?"

"I lied to every person I knew back in my own world when I told them I was moving to China." She reminded him. "And anyway, how do you know that I don't do sneaky things. You've only known me for a month."

"I've read about the past four years of your life. Not once did it mention a devious side." She had forgotten about the book. They knew a lot about her.

"Okay, perhaps I wouldn't have been sorted into to Slytherin. But I'm not smart enough for Ravenclaw or brave enough for Gryffindor, no matter how much I wish I was."

"Bollocks. You could be in either of those houses easily." George told her.

"I guess we'll never know. It doesn't really matter, I suppose." Hermione said. Elizabeth happened to be looking at George as she made that comment and she saw his eyes light up. She knew that he had just thought of something, but he didn't say anything about it for the rest of the night.

Elizabeth thought that perhaps she had imagined the look on George's face when nothing came of it over the next couple of days. But on her first day off from work, she found out what he had been thinking. She didn't expect to see him, so she was surprised when he arrived early to see her.

"George! What are you doing here?" She asked him.

"I'm happy to see you too." She had to smile. She had seen him every day since he had come to get her from her world. Not that she was complaining.

"I am happy to see you, I just thought that you had to work."

"I've decided to take the day off. When you're the boss, you can do whatever you want." He smirked.

"That's great. Was there something that you wanted?"

"Yes, I wanted to see if you would come for an outing with me."

"Sure. Where are we going?"

"I thought we'd go to Hogwarts." He said it casually, but he was watching her as he said it. Her eyes got wide. Hogwarts was the pinnacle of the Harry Potter world. Every child dreamed of going there. Elizabeth had despaired of ever getting to see the castle herself, the castle wasn't an easy place to find since it was protected by all kinds of spells and she had no excuses to go. And here was George, offering her the chance to visit the castle as though it wasn't a big deal.

"We can't go to Hogwarts, we're not students." She said looking downcast. He had raised her hopes only for her to remember that it wasn't as easy as just showing up at the gates.

"Actually, the students aren't there right now. It's summer break, in case you haven't noticed."

"Oh, I beg your pardon. We can't go to Hogwarts, we're both in our twenties and have no business there." George laughed.

"Don't you want to go?" He asked her.

"Of course I do. But I'm sure there are some sort of rules or restrictions that discourage people from just showing up."

"Nothing that we can't get around. I thought it would be fun to see what house you belong to." Now she knew what the look meant.

"Alright, let's go." George laughed again and took her hand.

They apparated to Hogsmead and headed toward Honeydukes. She knew that there was a secret passage into Hogwarts from the basement and knew that they would be fine getting into the castle. It was once they were in the castle that she wondered how George planned to proceed. They followed the passageway into the castle and came out at the one-eyed witch's statue and the two of them looked around cautiously. There was no one about. They maneuvered around the halls slowly, stopping and hiding anytime they heard a noise, making their way to the corridor where the gargoyle stood guard over the headmaster's office. Elizabeth was wide-eyed as they walked, trying to take in everything as much as she could and she felt a longing to attend a class, to have a meal in the great hall, to have a professor give her detention for breaking a rule.

"Nick." George whispered once they made it to the gargoyle. Elizabeth looked around, wondering who he was talking to, but she didn't see anyone. "Nick." He said a little louder. But there was no response. "Nick!" He hissed louder still, not wanting to attract attention, but seeming a little put out that he wasn't being heard. This time, one of the Hogwarts ghosts appeared directly in front of George. Elizabeth was curious. She had never seen a ghost before and she had to stifle the impulse to put her hand through his foot which was just a foot or so in front of her.

"You're Nearly Headless Nick!" She said with excitement and the ghost turned to her.

"I am. And you are?"

"This is Elizabeth." George introduced her.

"I don't recall having seen you here at Hogwarts before."

"No, she's American. Did you get it?" George asked him.

"I did. I must say that I didn't like this request at all."

"I know, but it was for a good cause."

"If that good cause was this young lady, I suppose I understand, but I don't want to make this a habit."

"Absolutely not." George grinned. Then he paused and all three of them were silent. "Well, what is it?" George finally asked, growing impatient.

"The password is _Evanesco_."

"Thanks, Nick. I owe you one."

"Not at all, young Weasley. It's always a pleasure to help out my fellow Gryffindors." And with that Nearly Headless Nick went on his way. George turned to the ugly gargoyle and said the password causing the guardian to move out of the way so that he and Elizabeth could make their way up to the headmaster's office.

Elizabeth looked around the office and noted the portraits of the previous headmasters and looked closely at the one of Dumbledore. Elizabeth was in awe. There was the man, or a picture of the man, who had orchestrated most of the things that had happened in Harry's life and the downfall of Voldemort. He looked like such a kind soul as he looked at Elizabeth through his spectacles. He also looked amused. He knew all about George and did not appear to be surprised to see him in the office. He and the other portraits were all probably going to tell Professor McGonagall that she and George had been there, but at the moment they didn't seem to care. George and Elizabeth moved over to the cabinet and looked inside, finding the hat easily.

"Elizabeth Fairchild." George said, doing his best impression of Professor McGonagall calling up the first years to be sorted. Elizabeth laughed and moved close and George slipped the hat on her head.

"Well, hello there. This is rather a strange meeting, isn't it? What can I do for you?" The hat started speaking in her ear. She wasn't exactly sure how this was going to work. If she just thought out her answers, would the hat get it, or did she have to speak aloud? "Just think it, Dear, we'll get along fine."

"I see. Thank you. I was hoping that you'd be able to tell me which house I should have gone to, if I had been lucky enough to come to Hogwarts."

"This is a rather unusual request. The sorting should come much sooner in a young witch's life."

"I know, but I didn't discover that I was a witch until quite recently."

"Yes, I can see that you're a bit of an unusual case. To be honest with you, the sorting comes early in the life of a witch or wizard before they've developed their character fully. Often where I place a young witch or wizard helps them develop into the type of person they're meant to be. You've already discovered much about yourself, and as a result, you already have an inkling of where you should have gone, don't you?"

"Slytherin?"

"Hat's don't have much of a sense of humor, my dear." She giggled to herself, but the hat wasn't amused. "I will say you'll need some cunning to work this plan of yours, but you certainly don't possess much of that quality and I can see that you don't value it much at all. No, no. It's not Slytherin for you. Nor Ravenclaw, though you possess wit and intellect in abundance. You know where you should go, but you can always choose the other house. Ultimately, seeing where you've been and where you want to go there's really no wrong answer. Those two houses would have served you well and you would have thrived in both. But one means more to you than the other, and that's where you should go."

"Alright, I accept."

"Hufflepuff!" The hat said aloud.

"Thank you, sir." She thought to the hat before taking it off.

"My pleasure."

She took off the hat and looked at George, who looked bemused. She laughed at the look on his face, she knew that he had been sure she would have been a Gryffindor.

"You were in there for quite a while." He observed.

"Yes, I had to explain to the hat why I was there. Then we had a talk about where I belonged."

"You had a talk with the hat?" He was amused.

"Yes, of course. I suppose because I'm older he had no qualms about discussing my options with me. He was right, though, I really knew all along where I should have gone. The most important things to me are my relationships. I was willing to die for Leah, but that wasn't being brave, I was terrified as soon as I knew what was supposed to happen."

"But that's what bravery is, being the only one who knows you're afraid."

"But it was my friendship with her that spurred me on to bravery, it was my motivation."

"Alright. I suppose the hat has spoken. I won't lie, it's a bit of a disappointment that we wouldn't have been in the same house."

"I'm a little younger than you, you wouldn't have noticed me anyway."

"I always noticed pretty girls." He told her, eyeing her up and down.

"Stop that." She gave him a playful shove with her good hand, which he grabbed. He pulled her to him and kissed her. She pulled away quickly. "George, I'm absolutely sure we've already talked about this and your girlfriend." She glared at him. He laughed.

"About that—" He started to say, but was interrupted by Professor McGonagall coming into her office.

"Mr. Weasley, what are you doing in here?" She asked, completely surprised at the sight of him.

"Oh, hello professor. You're back sooner than I expected."

"Mr. Weasley, explain yourself!" She ordered.

"We were borrowing your hat for a few moments." He said, as though that explained how they had gotten into her office and why they were there. She looked around and noticed the sorting hat and then seemed to noticed Elizabeth for the first time. She looked at the portraits on the wall, and they all nodded, confirming George's story.

"I thought we had finished with your shenanigans when you left Hogwarts." She said.

"I thought you might miss me." He grinned at her impishly.

"Not even a little." But she looked considerably less stern. "And you are?" She turned to Elizabeth.

"Elizabeth Fairchild. I'm a friend of George's. I'm afraid it's my fault we're here. I wanted a chance to be sorted, but we couldn't go about it in the usual way." She introduced herself.

"I'm Professor McGonagall, headmistress of Hogwarts."

"She knows." George told her.

"Well, there's someone else here you should meet. Mr. Weasley, why don't you take Miss Fairchild to visit Madam Pomfrey." Professor McGonagall had noted the bruises on Elizabeth's face.

"That's an inspired idea. Thanks Professor." George grabbed her good hand and they started down the stairs."

"And please ask the next time you want to visit my office." She called after them.

George led Elizabeth to the hospital wing. Madam Pomfrey took one look at Elizabeth and got right to work. The bruises were gone in a moment and her hand and ribs were healed a short time later. Elizabeth took a deep breath as soon as her ribs were healed, happy to be able to do so without pain for the first time in weeks. She thanked Madam Pomfrey and they left the castle out the front doors. Elizabeth got a good look at the castle in all its glory as they left and she sighed, wishing that she could have gotten her magical education there. But it didn't do any good for her to dwell on what she wouldn't have, she had to be happy that she was having the opportunity to learn magic at all, and to be sorted by the sorting hat was something she would never forget.

George took her back to the house and then he went on to his shop, leaving her to study. A while later, Hermione came home from the ministry and saw her hard at work.

"You look better!" Hermione saw that the bruises had gone. "Did you see a healer?"

"I did, one of the best." She replied, smiling. Hermione raised an eyebrow at her. "I saw Madam Pomfrey." She was still feeling giddy after the adventure of the day.

"You went to Hogwarts? Did Professor McGonagall invite you to the castle?"

"No, George snuck us in." Hermione gave a sigh.

"I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. It seems like a lot of work to get you into the castle just to have you healed. He could have taken you to St. Mungos."

"We didn't go to the castle so that Madam Pomfrey could heal me. That was just a side perk of going. George took me so that I could be sorted." Hermione groaned.

"Of course he did. And let me guess, you were sorted into Gryffindor because there wasn't a separate house for reckless behavior." Elizabeth laughed.

"Actually, I was sorted into Hufflepuff."

"Were you really? Over Ravenclaw and Gryffindor?" Hermione quickly forgot to be disappointed in the rule breaking over the news of where Elizabeth had been sorted.

"Yeah. The hat intimated that once we're older, we've already developed into who we're supposed to be and we should be able to choose for ourselves. I already knew that I belonged in Hufflepuff."

"But Hufflepuffs are so…"

"Loyal? Hardworking?" Elizabeth provided some positive words.

"Yes, both of those." Hermione looked uncomfortable. Elizabeth knew that she was going to say something uncomplimentary about the house and she grinned a little.

"Just because the hat said Hufflepuff doesn't mean I'm not brave or smart or sly or whatever else the houses represent, it just means that I value other things more. Besides, it doesn't really matter since I won't be going to school, it was just something I've always wanted to do and somehow George knew that it would make my day."

"Yes, he certainly does have a handle on what would make you happy. It comes from reading your book over and over."

"I'd like to do something that would make him happy." Elizabeth mused, the idea that had been forming starting to solidify a little.

"Just having you here makes him happy. He's been more like himself these past few weeks than he has been in a couple of years, he's making mischief again and he laughs a lot more."

"I'm so glad that I get to see him this way. It's like seeing the George from the book, and he and Fred were my favorite characters."

"Were they?"

"Oh, yes. The books got a little heavy and the twins were always there for comic relief or for perspective. Fred's death was one of the most tragic to me because he seemed outside the heaviness. When the twins were there, things weren't so bad, but when Fred died, things were never going to be quite okay ever again."

"I think he felt the same way about you. In your book you were always positive, happy, and a little funny. When you died, it seemed like Leah had an epiphany, but she was never going to be the same. I think George thought about himself and Fred's death as he was reading about you and how more happiness had been taken away. Having you here is like getting some of that happiness back."

"But not completely. Every once in a while he has a look on his face that gives away how much pain he's in."

"That will probably never go away, but I've seen it less frequently over the past couple of weeks."

Elizabeth was glad that she was helping George, but she wanted to do more. Before she could do anything, she had to learn enough magic to function in this world that she had chosen to come to, so she picked up her book while Hermione went to find Ron.

Ron had been rather distant with her. She wasn't sure if it was because he didn't like her or if she made him uncomfortable, but whenever the two of them happened to be in the house alone together, he made excuses to avoid her. She didn't want to make him uncomfortable, after all he was letting her stay at his house until she could figure out her own living space, but she wasn't sure what to do about him. It wasn't until after she had moved into her own place that she asked him about it. He admitted that he wanted to avoid any appearance of partiality for her. She was living in his house and if Hermione thought for one second that he was becoming too attached she would never let him hear the end of it. His solution had been to just avoid Elizabeth. It made Elizabeth laugh to hear his reasoning, and was glad to know that he didn't hate her.

George came to see her later that evening when he had closed up his shop. Elizabeth appreciated his help as she continued to learn, but wondered if he was finding time for everything he wanted to do. He must have had things he did before he met her, including spending time with Angelina, but it seemed like he was spending all his free with her now. She had been there a week and they had spent nearly every waking hour together. Not that she minded. But she wanted to let him know that she wasn't going to be offended if he wanted to do something other than help her.

"George, are you sure you shouldn't have been sorted into Hufflepuff as well?"

"Are you mad? No one wants to be sorted into Hufflepuff." He teased.

"Hey!"

"You don't count, you're not real." The two of them had continued the argument about who was real and who was a fictional character as an inside joke, and George was especially good at inserting little jabs into the conversation. Elizabeth rolled her eyes at him.

"Well, you've been really wonderful about helping me escape death and in every aspect of this transition from reality into this imaginary world of magic," she was always willing to jab him right back, "that I thought maybe you valued friendship more than you let on."

"I'm afraid that friendship wasn't the motivating factor in my actions." He told her. "I went to your world to make myself feel better. And now that you're here, well, you're nicer to look at than most of the other people I know. And who doesn't like to have something nice to look at?"

"I don't believe you. Only a true friend would spend all his free time helping a magic novice learn rudimentary spells."

"You're _really_ nice to look at."

"Don't you want to be out doing something else?"

"Not particularly. I'm invested in you. I saved your life, I want to make sure that you're making the most of it."

"Seriously, George, don't you have something else you'd rather be doing?"

"No." His answer was short and directly to the point. He really wanted to be there with her, doing what he was doing. She was attributing this to friendship. He was not.

"Well, if you ever do, it won't hurt my feelings if you want to leave me here to my own devices."

"I won't hesitate to leave you if there's something else I want to be doing."

"Good, and I won't either." She grinned at him. He raised an eyebrow at her.

"Is there something else that you'd rather be doing? Is that what you're getting at?"

"Not at the moment, but you never know. I happened to notice that there are some other book shops in Diagon Alley that I haven't visited yet." He groaned.

"If you decide to visit another book shop, I promise that I'll find something else to do." She laughed.

They returned to studying after their conversation until Elizabeth got tired and wanted to go to sleep. George stood up to go when she did and he leaned in.

"George…" She warned as she backed away.

"Yes?"

"Angelina." She stated plainly. He didn't seem phased.

"Elizabeth, I broke up with Angelina."

"You did? When?"

"When we first came back here, before we fixed things. While you were reading your ending." He had let her believe that he was still with Angelina for weeks. She had been feeling horrible about the way George kept kissing her and how he wasn't going to see Angelina when he should have been missing her.

"But…why?"

"Because of you, you homewrecker." He joked and she felt terrible. He saw the look on her face and laughed. "I'm just teasing you. I realized weeks ago that it wasn't working."

"Oh. So, I don't have to feel bad about having kissed you before?"

"Not at all. Angelina is actually dating Lee now."

"Good. Then I won't feel bad about this." She stood on her tiptoes and kissed him enthusiastically. She wove her fingers into his hair and gently pulled his head down so that she didn't have to reach up to him quite as far. He responded by wrapping his arms around her and pulling her close.

"It's about time, you two." Hermione called to them as she passed through the sitting room on her way to the kitchen. The two of them laughed.


	10. Books

Time went by quickly. Elizabeth continued to study, trying to learn as much as she could as quickly as she could. She was making great progress. She and George still spent most of their time together, although George began to get back to his usual pursuits once he was sure of Elizabeth's affections. He visited his parents without taking Elizabeth. She wasn't ready to meet them yet. If he had taken her before she had found out that he was single, it would have been something she would have been happy to do, but now that they were just starting some sort of relationship, she didn't want that pressure. Not yet, anyway.

Elizabeth, for her part, was starting to explore without George a little. On her next day off, she did go into the one of the other book shops in Diagon alley and spent a lot of time browsing. She was there so long, in fact, that she drew the attention of the owner. She ended up talking to him for quite a while about books. He wasn't a muggle, but he had actually read quite a few muggle books that Elizabeth loved and they had a lot to talk about. She made it a habit to drop by every time she had a day off, and she began to be quite familiar with everyone who worked there and other customers who came in on a regular basis. She found time to fit in some reading time in her busy schedule of work and studying and George and she liked to discuss what she had been reading with other people inside the book shop. The owner recognized her impeccable taste and over time started recommending books that she liked to other customers and asking her for suggestions. It was often the highlight of her day to spend a half an hour in the bookshop.

She was thinking about her favorite stories after leaving the bookshop one day and thought about the Harry Potter books. She had brought her copies with her when she had come to this world, but they were hidden in her house. She didn't think it right to share them with anyone, they contained so much information about Harry and what had really happened with Voldemort. She was sure that Harry hadn't shared everything that had happened with anyone, excepting maybe Hermione and Ron. But, the more she thought about it, the more she thought about letting Harry see them. She felt a little uncomfortable knowing everything she did about him and wanted him to know what she knew. So, one day, she apparated to see him. She brought the entire series of books with her.

"Hi Harry." She greeted him when he answered the door.

"Hi, Elizabeth. Ginny's not here, she's at practice." She and Ginny and Hermione had been fast friends and they spent time together when Elizabeth wasn't with George.

"I know. I'm actually here to see you." Harry let her in and led her to the sitting room. "You know my story." She stated. She knew that he did, he had helped George come to get her.

"Of course." He smiled.

"Well, I know yours, too. I'm sure you've heard George and me joking about who's real and who's fictional." He nodded. "Well, the books that talk about this world are all about you." He raised an eyebrow. "They followed you as you went through school pretty closely." He started to look concerned.

"Do they…have a lot of detail?"

"Yes." She pulled her bag closer to her and pulled out the books, which she had shrunk for convenience and returned them to their original size. Harry looked overwhelmed by the sheer volume of the books. "I wanted to show you this. I feel a little guilty knowing all this and I thought maybe you'd want to read it so that you know what I know."

"This is all about me?"

"I'm afraid so. I've been surprised at all the things that George knows about me, but it's nothing compared to this."

He came to see her a few weeks later with the books.

"I can't believe that it's all in there." He said, handing her book after book.

"Yes, it's quite a story."

"You won't let anyone else read this, will you? There are things in there that I've never told anyone."

"I won't."

"I wasn't the most pleasant person to be around my fifth year, was I?"

"You redeemed yourself. And everyone knows when you've been living with horrible relatives for years and have been neglected and manipulated, you get a free pass."

"That's kind. I guess I don't have to feel so bad about knowing so much about you from your book."

"I guess we're even." She smiled.

Elizabeth started looking for a place of her own not too long after she started working for George. She liked the fact that she could use floo powder to get just about anywhere quickly and that she didn't have to find something in London if she didn't want to. She found a little cottage not too far from the coast that was quiet and quaint and inexpensive. Eventually she found that apparating was going to be necessary, so she practiced and took lessons and got her license to do that, too. She liked the fact that she didn't have to wait to do some of the things she had read about in the books. She was old enough to do magic outside school, there was no trace on her, she could apparate as soon as she decided that she wanted to learn how.

As time went on Elizabeth became proficient in magic. She was a hard worker and she was motivated and she progressed quickly. And she had help. Hermione had been good enough to continue to work with her and with such a talented witch to question and learn from it took her far less time to learn than it would have otherwise.

Hermione also proved useful in regards to her status in this fictional world. She didn't have any documents, no license, no birth certificate, no passport, no proof of schooling, no way to prove that she was in the country legally (which she wasn't, she realized). Hermione was able to help her fabricate everything she needed. This was another example of how Hermione was willing to break the rules that she claimed to hold so dear. Elizabeth had to smile when Hermione handed her a stack of forged papers and told her that copies were now in all the appropriate departments of government.

After a few months, she finally allowed George to take her to the Burrow. She had been curious about it and the rest of his family for a long time, but meeting his family felt like a big deal and George was going to have to explain where she had come from. She had asked to keep her origins secret from most everyone, but she made an exception for George's family.

They went on a slow day at the shop and George recruited Ron to keep an eye on things. Mr. and Mrs. Weasley were now living in the large hodgepodge home by themselves, all of their kids had moved on to other things. Mrs. Weasley was delighted to meet Elizabeth, which was a little bit of a relief. She had worried that Mrs. Weasley might have been especially attached to Angelina and would resent Elizabeth being with George. But she needn't have worried. Molly was warm and friendly and was happy to see George so happy.

"So, Elizabeth, you're from the States, are you?" His father asked her.

"Not just from the states, Dad, she's from a book."

"I beg your pardon?"

George explained how he had gone into the book to save her and had brought him back to their world to live.

"Are you really from a fictional book? And a muggle as well? Fascinating!"

"Fascinating? Arthur, she's left her country, her family, her reality and traveled here all by herself. Has that been a hard transition, Dear?" Molly looked concerned that Elizabeth had given up so much and might be having a hard time.

"Oh, no. We moved so much while I was growing up that I never really put down deep roots. My parents moved to Guam a year or so ago and I haven't seen them much. I guess I always look at moving as a new adventure, and this has been the best adventure I've ever been on."

"Well, you just come here if you're ever in need of anything. We're happy to help you with anything since you're so far from everything you know."

"Thank you, that's very kind."

"Not at all, Dear."

The rest of their time at the Burrow was pleasant. Mrs. Weasley took on a motherly air around Elizabeth, which made her smile. And a few months later, Elizabeth received a light blue Weasley sweater for Christmas. She knew that she had been accepted.

Over the next few months Elizabeth became a regular fixture around Diagon Alley. She liked working for the Weasley's Wizard Wheezes, she got to meet students who were going to Hogwarts, she met people she had read about in books and became friends with many of them. Lee Jordan stopped by quite often and sometimes brought Angelina. There was no ill will from her about how George had broken up with her, and they occasionally went to Ginny's quidditch games as a group.

George always let her borrow his extra Harpies shirt so that she could support the team. She never did get around to buying her own and George liked it that way. He said he liked how the shirt smelled every time she returned it to him. She loved it when he said things like this. There was always a nagging doubt in the back of her mind that he was only with her because he had saved her life. But after a while, she saw that they were compatible in so many other ways. They challenged each other and they had fun together and they both knew so much about the other from their respective books that they didn't have to explain themselves very often.

George still had moments when he thought about Fred and his entire demeanor changed and he became melancholy and pensive. Elizabeth was the only one who was able to pull him out of these moods. She had become very good at distracting him with something funny from her world, or some kind of adventure that made him smile. She once took him inside the shrieking shack. She knew the stories behind it, how it had been Remus Lupin who had given the shack the reputation for being haunted and she wasn't afraid of the idea of it. It was one place that Fred and George had never dared go. He still didn't know the stories, Harry had never shared them with anyone, although Ron and Hermione knew because they had been there. So, on George's birthday, which was always a sad day for him because it reminded him that he didn't get to celebrate with Fred, she surprised him by taking him to Hogsmead. She walked him over to the shrieking shack and they stared at it for a little while.

"Do you want to go in?" She asked him out of the blue.

"I don't think that's a very good idea, Elizabeth. There are all kinds of stories about how dangerous this place in."

"Surely you're not afraid of going in? You're always up for an adventure." He looked at her and she thought she detected a hint of nervousness. "Why George, I have to say I'm a little surprised." He laughed. "Come on, I'll protect you."

"My tiny girlfriend who has only been studying magic for a few months is going to protect me? That's great, I feel so much safer." He rolled his eyes at her.

"I'm extremely robust. You don't have a thing to worry about." She said, trying to look tough. She took his hand and he allowed himself to be led to the back of the house where no one would see them sneaking in. She pried a board off a window with her bare hands and they crawled in. They walked around looking at the broken furniture and the scratches on the walls and floors.

"I can't believe that we were too nervous to come inside. Fred and I could have done some serious research in a nice quiet place like this. And everything is already broken, so we wouldn't have had to worry about damaging anything."

"Would you like to see the kicker?" He looked at her questioningly. She led him to a tunnel which obviously stretched for a long way but was completely dark. "This tunnel here leads to Hogwarts." She told him. He looked surprised.

"It couldn't possibly. Fred and I knew every passageway in and out of Hogwarts and this one wasn't one of them."

"It was." She insisted. "Didn't you ever wonder about the tunnel that was protected by the whomping willow?" He shook his head disbelievingly.

"How could you possibly know that?"

"My books, of course."

"Why would this passage be in the books if no one can use it?"

"But people did use it. There's a particular knot at the base of the tree that immobilizes it and makes it possible to enter the tunnel." George chuckled.

"Well, you've just cleared up something that I've been wondering about for years. Fred and I tried to guess where that passage went and why it had been built if it was inaccessible. It's a shame I didn't know about it while I was in school." He kissed her. "Thanks for this."

"You're welcome. I have to admit, I love it when I can tell you something about your world that you didn't know before." She smirked wickedly. He laughed.

It always made her happy to know that she had made him smile. That was why she had decided to see what she could do to rid him of him melancholia permanently.


	11. I Can't Tell You

Elizabeth would always remember the day that she decided that she was ready to repay George for all he had done for her. He had saved her life, he had taken her to his world of magic, he had helped her transition into that world by giving her a job and helping her learn magic, and he had been a great boyfriend. She didn't know if she could ever thank him enough, but she had been planning to try for a long time. She just needed to learn enough magic to be able to do it. And one day, a little over a year after she had come to George's world, she was given a sign that it was time.

She had been working on a potion with Hermione. Hermione had been essential to learning potions. Hermione knew what most potions were supposed to look like throughout the process of making them and had helped her to work her way up to some incredibly complex potions. Elizabeth had proven to be quite talented when it came to making them and one day, as they were brewing some amortentia, Hermione told Elizabeth what to do next after glancing at the book and Elizabeth corrected her. Hermione disagreed and Elizabeth argued and eventually Hermione told her to go ahead and do it her way, they would restart the potion when it all went wrong. Elizabeth did do it her way, and the potion ended up working out perfectly. Hermione was amazed, but couldn't deny that Elizabeth had been right. Elizabeth hadn't ever felt that sure of herself when it came to magic, but at that moment she had known she was right, even though the smartest person she had ever met had disagreed. The sense of elation she felt at being right was the signal that she was ready.

That night after Hermione left, she began another complicated potion. She had been stocking away potion ingredients and had everything she needed to try a couple of times. If anyone caught what she was doing, she could always say she was continuing on with her studies, she knew that sixth year Hogwarts students had attempted this potion, so it wouldn't be out of character. But she didn't want anyone to know what she was up to, so she hoped that this was one of those nights when George would be working late or visiting with one of the many members of his family.

Her luck held out and she was able to brew her potion properly on the first try without any interruptions. At least she hoped she had done it properly. It looked exactly like the book had indicated it should, and she had used the small alterations she had read about in the sixth Harry Potter book, which had helped.

There was a second potion that she needed to make. She had done her research and found the instructions on how to make it and spent most of the night trying to brew it properly. She eventually thought she had it, and she tried both of her potions on a frog that she heard croaking out in her garden. She was hesitant to try them out on a living thing, after all, if she had done something wrong the poor animal would suffer. But she couldn't try them out on herself, so she took a deep breath and gave the frog a drop of the first. It appeared to work, almost too well. Had she killed it? She gave the frog a drop of the second and it began to stir and was soon hopping out of her cottage as fast as it could get away. Elizabeth was elated. She had done it properly. She bottled up both potions and stuck them in a bag with some clothes.

The next day at work, she mentioned to George that she'd like to go and see her family. He was surprised.

"I haven't seen them in a year, and they're bound to wonder if I'm okay. I think it's something I need to do."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. Would you mind helping me to make some of that potion you used to visit my world?"

"Of course I'll help. We can enlist Harry and Ginny to help, too, if you'd like." Elizabeth nodded, happy that George didn't see anything strange about her request. Harry and Ginny were happy to help and over the next couple of days they made the potion that would get Elizabeth back to the world she had come from. She insisted on being the one to put the finishing touches in the cauldron and she was by herself when the potion was finished. She bottled up some of it and stuck it in her bag before anyone could see what she was doing. She wasn't sure how much she was going to need. She prepared herself to leave and spent the evening before she left with George.

"How long do you think you'll be gone?" He asked her, looking down that she was leaving. They had spent so much time together over the past year that it was going to be strange not seeing him every day.

"I'm not sure. A couple of weeks at least, maybe over a month."

"So long?"

"Maybe. I don't know how long it will take to…convince them that I'm okay and that these long absences are going to be normal from now on."

"Maybe I should come with you."

"No!" As soon as the word came out of her mouth she knew that it was a mistake. She should have played it cool and not let him know how imperative it was that she went on her own. He was definitely surprised and soon suspicious.

"And why not?"

"George, if you come with me, my parents are going to think that…"

"That we're getting serious? We are, aren't we." She grinned. She wasn't the kind of girl to bother about putting labels on anything, she was content to just be with George. She didn't know how he felt most of the time, but to hear him say that he thought they were getting serious was an indication of how he felt about her.

"Are we?" She teased giving him a quick peck on the lips. He couldn't help but grin back. "Maybe when I get back you can let me know what you mean by that. But for now, I want to make this first trip back by myself. Perhaps you should come back with me next time, though." This seemed to satisfy him. It had taken a long time before she had met the rest of his family, so he knew that it took her a while to feel comfortable.

"But a month is such a long time. What about all of your responsibilities?"

"I've asked Ron to help you at the shop while I'm gone." She had made herself indispensable to him at the shop, she was there almost as much as he was and she had even given him some help with the development of some of his new products.

"And what about your book shop friends? How are they going to last a month without you?" She laughed. She really had become essential to them. The owner had taken to printing up lists of her book suggestions and people had been reading them, enjoying her selections. She had made it a habit to go to the shop at a usual time every week and she had three or four people who tried to be there at the same time and they had an informal book club. Sometimes they were joined by other customers.

"They'll be okay for a little while. Perhaps you could stop by and keep them company." She teased. George had not joined her for her visits to the book shop.

"I'll miss you." He said, seriously.

"I'll miss you too." He grabbed her to him and kissed her passionately.

"Come back as soon as you can."

"I will."

Early the next morning she checked her bag and made sure that her potions were safe and that she hadn't forgotten anything. She had her muggle clothes and her robes. She was ready. She swallowed some of the potion George Ginny and Harry had helped her to prepare and then concentrated on where she wanted to go, the city where she had gone to college, to the parking lot where she and George had apparated to when he had brought her back the first time.

She was prepared for the release of pressure when she arrived from her apparition and was able to leave quickly without anyone noticing her even though car alarms were going off all over. She ran for a few hundred yards and then walked as though she had nothing to do with it. She could hear the car alarms as she walked away.

She laughed. It had worked, she was back at her college. It looked the same as it had when she had been there, but not a lot changes in a year. It was summer break at the college, so there was no one around. She walked over to a very cheap motel that was close to campus. She knew that it was safe and clean. She rented a room for just two days, she could always come back when she had done what she needed to do.

Once inside her room, she sat down and reread the entire seventh Harry Potter book. She had read it so many times and had read the important passages over and over and memorized them over the last month. She wanted to be sure of what she needed to do. The hardest parts were those not in the book. She had to rely on a conversation she had remembered from over a year ago. There was no way to confirm what she had been told or narrow the timeline down even a little. She was just going to have to be patient. As she thought through her plan, she realized that she had probably better get a few supplies if she was going to just be waiting. She could be waiting for a few weeks and she wouldn't want to leave to get something to eat, she might miss them. So, she bought some things that would keep over a few weeks. It might be uncomfortable, but she would make it.

Finally, she thought she was ready. She swallowed more of George's potion and concentrated and apparated.

She arrived in the field near her home in England, she recognized it and was relieved that she had at least made it home even if she hadn't made it to the right point in the book. She had chosen to apparate there because it was relatively isolated and the noise from her apparition wouldn't draw a lot of attention. It was a dangerous time to do anything out of the ordinary. Actually, it was just a dangerous time no matter what, if she had arrived when she had intended. She quickly apparated to a house on the outskirts of London.

The house was old and dark. This was Amycus Carrow's house. She had done her research and had found out where he had lived before he had been sent to Azkaban after the Battle of Hogwarts. If everything had gone as planned, no one would be there, Amycus would be at Hogwarts tormenting the students. She should be able to stay there, if she was careful, until she had a visit from Lee and Fred.

That was why she was there. She had to talk to Fred, alone.

She let herself into the house and decided to set herself up in the kitchen. It was at the back of the house where she would be the least likely to be spotted and she could have a fire if it got too cold. She didn't want to light a fire in the fireplace unless it was absolutely necessary, Fred and Lee would be sure to notice if a fire was going when they arrived and they would be spooked and pick somewhere else to do their broadcast. Hermione had shown her how to put a fire in a jar and that would help.

The problem was, she had only a vague idea of when they were supposed to do the broadcast there. The conversation she had been using as her guide was the one she had had with George after she met Lee for the first time. He had told her that Fred and Lee had broadcast from Amycus' house after hearing how terrible the Carrows were from Ginny after the Christmas Holiday. That meant that they must have come sometime between January and March because all the Weasleys had gone into hiding around Easter. She had arrived toward the end of January, taking a gambol that they hadn't already been there. She hoped that Fred and Lee would have waited long enough for the students to be back at Hogwarts, but not too long afterwards to use his house out of spite.

Elizabeth set down her bag and pulled out a blanket and a book and lay down on the kitchen floor, preparing herself to be there for a while, but hoping it wouldn't be too long. She was glad that she had a little time, she felt terrible after having to apparate through time twice in such a short amount of time. She kept everything at the ready to hide in case she heard anything.

But she didn't hear anything, not for a while. She spent her days reading or exploring Amycus' house, trying to keep out of sight, but also trying to keep herself from going crazy. She went over her plan many, many times but after a while, began to despair that she had come too late. She would have to apparate out of the book and back to her own reality, and then come back into the book earlier in time to catch them. It was fine, she could do it, but crossing into alternate realities and different times was incredibly taxing on her. Doing that sort of apparition too frequently would not be good for her. She had felt terrible after coming to this world after only two days of rest. And, the more she moved around, the more likely she was to be caught. She didn't want to go, but after three weeks of waiting, she felt like she had missed them. She prepared to try and come back a little earlier, but decided to give it two more days before getting out of there and trying again.

The day before she planned to leave, she heard some noise outside the house. She heard the familiar pop of apparition and then some muffled talking and laughing. She peaked out the window and saw Lee and Fred coming up to the house. She quickly hid herself, feeling elated. There they were! She hadn't missed them! She hid herself in a linen closet and listened to them come into the house and set up their things to broadcast in the sitting room.

It was surreal to hear them doing a Potterwatch. She knew that this was their time, their reality, but she also knew what was going to happen, knew that this was in her past and that Fred was doomed to die in a few short months. But here he was, laughing and talking and giving hope to everyone out there who was doing their best to stay safe and hopeful in Voldemort's wake.

She waited until the end of the broadcast and then emerged from her hiding spot, staying out of sight as best as she could while still keeping an eye on the two of them as they prepared to leave. She was going to have to time it just right, or Lee would be alerted, and that was the last thing she wanted. She watched as they finished packing up their things and then sent a stunning spell at Fred as he raised his wand to disapperate. Lee had raised his arm at the same time, and she hoped that he hadn't seen the light come from her wand. She had Fred in the full body bind and he had fallen to the floor. Elizabeth stood very still for a minute to make sure that Lee wasn't coming back and that no one had heard them, and then she quietly made her way over to Fred.

She knew that she shouldn't be surprised by the resemblance to George, but it was uncanny. The only difference she could see was that Fred had both his ears. She looked down at him.

"Fred, I need to talk to you. I'm going to take the body bind off you and I'll lay down my wand as an act of good faith. You can leave if you'd like, but I have something important to tell you." She moved his wand over to a table and then she removed her spell and put her wand down.

Fred sat up and looked her over.

"An American?" She nodded. He couldn't help himself, he grinned. "Well, if you are one of His agents, he certainly does know how to pick them." He wiggled his eyebrows at her. She felt herself blushing a little bit, but she also grinned back.

"I promise I'm not one of His agents. I'm here to help you…and George." She was watching his reactions carefully. She knew that he was a joker, but he was also a member of the Order of the Phoenix and was dangerous if he thought that she was an enemy. She had to convince him that she was his friend somehow.

"We're not really in need of any help at the moment."

"No, I know you're not…at the moment. I'm here in regards to something that happens later."

"What?"

"Fred, you and George are my favorite characters in some books I love and I'm here to change your ending." He stood staring at her with his mouth wide open and she suddenly understood George a lot better. She had echoed George's words, she couldn't help herself. But it also sounded crazy and she knew that right now Fred was more suspicious of her than before. He narrowed his eyes at her and picked up his wand and pointed it at her. She made no move to pick up her own wand.

"Okay, who are you and what do you really want?"

"I just told you."

"Your master thought you could fool me just because you're pretty? He should have picked someone uglier but given her a plan."

"I don't have a master, thank you very much." She said, offended. Fred laughed at her tone.

"Okay, then explain yourself." He kept his wand pointed at her, but she let her wand lie still. He was still on his guard, but her actions showed him that she meant him no harm.

"Something is going to happen soon and I want to do everything I can to prevent it."

"Why?"

"Because I owe someone a great debt." She told him seriously. She thought about George and all the pain he had suffered since Fred's death. Fred must have noted the look on her face.

"Let's say that I believe you, what is it that you're trying to do?"

"I can't tell you."

"Who are you trying to repay?"

"I can't tell you."

"What debt do you owe to them?"

"I can't tell you."

"Well, that just cleared everything right up." Fred said sarcastically.

"I'm sorry, but I can't tell you very much right now. It's better if I wait to see if this works, because if it doesn't I'm going to come back and try again."

"How are you going to help me if I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing?"

"I'm going to tell you exactly what you're supposed to be doing. And it's rather simple."

"Oh really?"

"Yes. All I need you to do is take this at the proper time." She held out a tiny capsule. He took it and looked at it closely.

"What is it?"

"It's something that's going to help you and your brother."

"What does it do?"

"It's probably better if you don't know right now."

"I'm just supposed to believe that you aren't trying to poison me?"

"If I wanted to kill you, I could have done it before you even knew I was in the house." She couldn't have. She had no idea how to work any really dangerous spells, but he didn't need to know. He considered her words.

"When do I need to take it?" He was taking this a lot better than she had when George had sought her out. It had taken her days to accept anything George had told her, and Fred was already considering what she was saying after only a few minutes.

"There's going to come a time, soon, when you're going to be fighting next to your brother. He's going to tell a joke. When he does, you need to put this in your mouth."

"George tells jokes all the time, how will I know which one?"

"It won't be George, it will be Percy." Fred glared at her and pointed his wand at her again. She had debated telling him about Percy, she knew that Percy had been distant from his family for years, that Fred and George had been especially unhappy about his absence and that Fred wasn't going to believe her when she mentioned his name. But she had to have some marker for Fred to take the capsule and Percy's joke was the only thing she knew for certain was going to happen.

"Percy won't be fighting next to me." He told her flatly.

"Then you won't have to take the capsule." This answer surprised him. He looked at the capsule, then at her. She decided to plead with him. "I know this doesn't make any sense. I promise, if this works, I'll explain everything. I'll answer every question, I'll satisfy every curiosity. But I can't do it right now. It would change everything, and I can't change anything except this. Please, Fred. Please just trust me." She begged him sincerely. It must have been her sincerity that convinced him that he should trust her.

"You know an awful lot about me."

"Yes, I told you, I read about you in a book."

"I don't know anything about you."

"You don't need to know anything about me right now. If this works, then I'll have a lot of explaining to do." She would have to tell him the whole story if she was able to keep him alive, but for now, the less he knew the better.

"May I at least know your name?"

"Elizabeth."

"Well, Elizabeth, I must be a little crazy because I will consider your request." She breathed a sigh of relief, and then remembered that she had to ask him one more thing.

"Oh…"

"Did you have something else?"

"Well, I just need you to not mention our meeting to anyone at all, especially not George." He threw his hands up in the air in exasperation.

"You can't be serious."

"I know, I know. You two don't have secrets. Until now."

"You must be mad."

"I promise this will all make sense later. Please Fred." She tried begging again. It had worked before. She widened her eyes and tried to look as innocent as possible. He laughed.

"I guess whoever sent you really did know what they were doing. You didn't need a plan, you're charming enough without it. Okay, I won't tell anyone, but I'd like a little something from you in return."

"What did you have in mind?"

"How about a kiss?" She started laughing.

"That's not a good idea, believe me."

"Why not? Am I not handsome enough for you?" He was teasing, and he didn't have any idea how ironic that statement was, so she laughed even harder.

"That's not the problem. Just trust me, it's not a good idea."

"So, you won't tell me anything about this pill, you won't tell me what's supposed to happen, I can't tell anyone about this, I'm just supposed to take this all on blind faith and you won't even give me a little something in return. This has been a good talk."

"When you say it like that you make it seem like you're not happy to help me." She joked. She felt comfortable with him, probably because he and George were so alike. He laughed. "You won't forget to take it, will you?"

"I won't forget." He told her. Somehow, she had managed to make him feel at ease and he felt he could trust her, though he didn't know why. This was just the sort of thing that should have put him on his guard, but he was going to do it anyway. Elizabeth was so happy that she had managed to get him to concede to her request that she hugged him.

"Thank you, Fred." He hugged her back.

"You're welcome. Now, we should probably get out of here before we're discovered."

"I've been secretly living here for nearly four weeks. No one is coming here any time soon."

He laughed and he told her, "nice sweater". She looked down to see what she was wearing as he disapperated and saw that she wearing the Weasley sweater that George's mom had made her for Christmas. She now understood why Fred had been so easy to convince, he knew that she was someone his mother trusted. She thanked her lucky stars that she had happened to put it on that morning, and silently thanked Mrs. Weasley for giving it to her.

As soon as he was gone, Elizabeth broke out into a happy dance. He had believed her! He was going to do as she asked! The first part of her plan had worked and it had gone much more smoothly than she had believed possible. It occurred to her that he might have been leading her to believe that he trusted her when he had no intention of following through. He could have been at his flat right that minute, telling George all about her and making a plan to fool her into thinking he had taken the potion she had carefully prepared for him. He could lose the capsule, he could forget to take it at the critical time. There were so many things that could still go wrong, but she chose to believe that his acceptance was real.


	12. Please

The easy part of her plan done, she decided to spend one more night in Amycus' house. She awoke early the next day and gathered all her things together. She swallowed some of her potion and disapperated back to her world. She went back to the same small hotel and stayed for a couple of days, recovering and then opened her book to the chapter 31, The Battle of Hogwarts. She knew what she had to do, she had read it over so many times, but it was going to be so difficult. She didn't know what anything looked like, the corridor where she had to be, where any possible hiding places might be, but then she remembered that she did know. She had visualized it all in her head. Everything there was just as she had imagined. She felt better with that little bit of knowledge, and once again, she apparated back into the book's reality to the field near her home, this time to the evening of May 1st. She really hoped that whoever was living in the cottage in this timeline wasn't alarmed by the noise she made when coming into their reality, but she didn't dwell on it.

She quickly apparated to the Hogshead pub in Hogsmead. Most everyone who was sneaking into the castle to fight with Harry, Ron and Hermione should have gone through the passageway already, at least that was what she had planned. The barkeep, Aberforth Dumbledore glared at her, but he had already seen plenty of people pass through his pub that night and he showed her where to go without saying a word. She thanked him and made her way through the passageway quickly. She listened to the noise beyond the entrance until all the sounds faded away as everyone left to make their way to the great hall. She knew that she had to get out of there quickly as the younger students would be making their way through this tunnel soon. She scrambled out quickly and looked around the room of requirements, startled to see Ginny Weasley pacing. She had forgotten that Ginny's mother had forbidden her to participate in the fighting.

"Where have they all gone?" She asked Ginny in her best accent, pretending to be one of the fighters who was joining Harry.

"To the Great Hall." Ginny said, a bit angerly because she wanted to be with them. Elizabeth nodded and made her way out quickly, hoping that her appearance wouldn't have any bearing on the book.

She went out into the corridor and looked around. It was empty, the battle hadn't yet started. She needed to find a place to hide where she could still see what was happening. There were a couple of statues that she could hide behind and she picked the biggest one and took cover.

It was quiet where she was until she heard Voldemort's voice. He told everyone that his forces would attack at midnight and she knew that meant they only had a few minutes. Soon she would start seeing people near the room of requirements. She started seeing them after what seemed like a long time. Harry Ron and Hermione came up to the blank wall and walked past three times until the door appeared. They went in and a moment later, Ginny and two ladies that Elizabeth had never seen before but she knew were Nymphadora Tonks and Neville Longbottom's grandmother emerged and Elizabeth could hear Harry yelling at Ginny that she had to come back when he was finished. Ginny was smiling and even if Elizabeth hadn't read the book, she would have known that Ginny had no intention of returning to the room.

Harry Ron and Hermione hadn't been in the room very long before Draco Malfoy and his two cronies Crabbe and Goyle entered the room. Elizabeth knew that that her time was coming. She could already hear the fighting coming closer and she knew what was about to happen. Ron Hermione and Goyle came through the door, Goyle unconscious, Hermione and Ron coughing and looking damaged by the fire they had just escaped. Then, a few moments later Harry and Draco made it through the door also coughing and Draco was trying to choke out the name of his lost friend. A group of ghosts on their horses sped past and Harry noticed that Ginny wasn't around to get back into the room of requirements. Harry Ron and Hermione looked at the diadem of Ravenclaw and saw that the horcrux had been destroyed and then the battle entered the corridor.

This was what Elizabeth had been waiting for. She saw Fred and Percy back themselves into the corridor dueling death eaters. Harry, Ron and Hermione joined the fight and there was light shooting all over the corridor. Percy was closest to Elizabeth, so close that she could almost touch him, and Fred was right next to Percy. As they were dueling, the mask of the man Percy was dueling came off showing him to be the Minster of Magic and Percy made his joke about resigning. Elizabeth was watching Fred closely. He and Hermione and Harry had all sent stunning spells at the death eater that Fred was dueling and had taken him down. Fred said "You're joking, Perce!"* and looked over at Percy with glee. When he looked at his brother he happened to glance just over Percy's shoulder and he saw Elizabeth. Their eyes locked and his eyes widened as she nodded. He reached into his pocket and put something in his mouth.

"You actually are joking, Perce…I don't think I've heard you joke since you were—"* But he didn't get to finish his sentence. Elizabeth yelled _Depulso_ at Fred, moving him three feet away from where he had been standing just as the wall exploded. Everyone in the corridor, including Elizabeth were thrown through the air.

Elizabeth awoke to the sound of silence. For a moment she thought the blast had caused her to go deaf, but she soon realized she could hear fine, it was just an oddly silent moment. She understood that she must have woken during the hour respite that Voldemort had granted to the fighters to gather up the wounded and dead. She opened her eyes and saw that she was completely covered by wood and stone. She tried to get up, and she felt a terrible pain in her side. She looked down and saw that she had a large cut that was bleeding freely. She knew that she should find help, but she wasn't sure what to do. If she could stop the bleeding and make it out of the castle and see to it herself, she could avoid being spotted and ruining things. She had to make her way down to the grounds so that she could apparate away, but as she was making her way down, she knew that she was going to have to have someone look at it before she could do anything else.

She ripped a piece of her shirt and shoved it over the wound to stop the bleeding and staggered down to the Great Hall and prayed that no one would pay too much attention to her. She had to move slowly and stop often to rest, and along the way she saw the damage that had been done during the battle. There were bodies lying along every hallway and staircase. People who were in worse shape than she was were calling for help. She wanted to help, but she wasn't sure she had the strength to even levitate someone down. She tried anyway. She pointed her wand at the nearest person asking for help and the two of them continued on to the Great Hall.

The first healer who saw them looked over the student Elizabeth had brought down first and Elizabeth waited patiently until the healer was finished to show her her own wound. While she was waiting she looked around the great hall. She saw the Weasleys standing in a group and knew that they were standing around Fred. She felt a rush of adrenalin as she remembered why she was there in the first place. Had she done it? Was he alive, or had all of this been for nothing? She couldn't go up and find out if he was alive, she couldn't risk being seen and even if he was alive, everyone was supposed to believe that he was actually dead. That had been the whole point of her plan.

She watched George mourning the loss of his twin, and it took everything she had not to run over to him and tell him everything. But she knew that she couldn't. Instead, she sat tight as the pain in her side lessened but didn't disappear completely as the healer worked on her.

"Sorry, Dear, I'm just studying healing, I'm not fully qualified and I can't get rid of scars yet."

"Thank you." Elizabeth said quietly, trying her best to sound like everyone else around her. She got up and decided that if she kept her mouth shut and avoided certain people, she could help bring injured people into the Great Hall. So, she helped as much as she could, she kept her head down and didn't speak and was able to remain inconspicuous. She had to remain close to Fred's body.

When the fighting began again, Elizabeth knew that she should refrain from helping, she could change the book and she didn't want to do that, but she couldn't help herself. She didn't know enough to cause too much damage, but she was able to stun a few death eaters.

Eventually, the battle played out just as it had in the book, Harry defeating Voldemort and saving the wizarding world. Once it was finished, there were so many people walking around that she was able to remain unnoticed as she tried to inch her way over to Fred's body. However, once everything had been resolved, the Weasleys gathered around Fred's body once again and she couldn't get close. She had to find out what they planned to do in regards to his funeral and burial, so she began following them.

She followed them to the Burrow where she sat outside and used extendible ears to find out where his body was going to be prepared for burial. It was a painful time to have to listen, everyone was in shock over Fred's death. There were times when Elizabeth herself cried with the family, though no one saw her. She was grateful when Mr. and Mrs. Weasley mentioned where Fred was now lying and she could apparate there and keep vigil over his body until the burial and could stop eavesdropping on their excruciating sorrow.

She made it to the funeral home just in time. The workers were just about to prepare Fred's body. She stunned the two and then obliviated their memories so that they would think that they had already worked on Fred. She then checked on Fred. She couldn't tell if he was really dead, or if her potion had worked. She knew that it would be hard to tell, the only difference would be if he didn't start to decompose in a few days. She was going to have to wait until after the burial to find out if he was really alive. And that idea was terrifying even though she had always known she would have to do it that way.

She had to lurk around the funeral home like some death obsessed creeper just to make sure no one disturbed Fred until the day of the funeral. He was taken to the church for a service and then to the cemetery for the burial. Elizabeth watched from a distance. She knew that Fred's body would be safe now, so instead she kept her eyes on George. She hadn't known him at the height of his pain and she could see how broken he looked. He didn't cry much, it was almost as if he were suffering too much for tears. After the graveside service, people slowly began to drift away, but George stayed after everyone else had gone. He sat by as the grave was filled in and then leaned against the stone and wept.

How? How was George able to work through all this pain, Elizabeth wondered. And then she remembered that he hadn't. That was why he had come to save her, because he couldn't take it and he needed something to help him move past it.

Eventually it grew dark and George finally stirred. He placed something on the gravestone and then held up his wand and disapperated. Elizabeth walked over to the grave and looked to see what it was that George had left. It was a wand. Elizabeth pointed her wand at the ground and said "partis temporus" and the earth split apart, revealing Fred's coffin. Elizabeth's heart was pounding. "Please be alive, please be alive, please be alive" she chanted to herself as she jumped into the hole. She lifted the lid of the coffin and saw Fred looking peaceful. She took out the bottle holding the second potion she had brewed at home and poured a couple of drops into Fred's mouth.

He didn't move.

"Please, Fred." She whispered as she gave him another two drops. "Please." He remained still. She was heartbroken. She had failed, she had worked so hard to keep Fred alive, to give George the happiness he deserved, but it hadn't worked. She felt the tears coming down her face as she got to her feet.

"You're not just going to leave me here, are you?" She heard a voice and turned. There was Fred, sitting up and looking at her accusingly. She laughed and hugged him through her tears. "I don't suppose you'd care to explain what we're doing in an open grave?"

"I thought you arranged this." She said, looking innocent. His eyes widened. "Just kidding. Let's get out of here." They climbed out of the hole and Elizabeth reversed her spell to close the grave.

"I don't know why they bothered to put me in a suit. It's not as though I was supposed to be going anywhere with a dress code." He said, looking himself over. "But I suppose that I do look great." He loosened his tie and took off his coat. Then he patted his pockets, feeling for his wand which he pulled out.

"If you had your wand, what's this?" Elizabeth asked, pointing to the wand that was lying on his headstone. Fred's face fell as he picked up the wand.

"George thinks I'm dead." He said.

"Yes, he does."

"Did he take it hard?"

"That's why I'm here." He looked at her questioningly. "It's a long story. Let's get out of here before someone sees you and I'll explain everything." Her bag was lying behind a tree not to far away. They walked over to it and she pulled out her apparition potion. She took a swallow and then offered some to Fred, who didn't hesitate to have some. Then they apparated back to Elizabeth's world. Fred wasn't prepared for what was going to happen upon their arrival and he fell to his knees as car alarms started going off all around them.

"That was quite an entrance." Fred noticed.

"I know. That's why we came here instead of a crowded room. When George first tried that with me, we apparated right into your shop and broke everything around us." Fred grinned.

Elizabeth helped him to his feet and the two of them rushed out of the parking lot. They made it over to the hotel that Elizabeth had been staying at intermittently over the past four weeks.

"Did you save my life?" Fred asked her, cutting right to the point as soon as the door was shut. She nodded and he grabbed her and kissed her. She pulled back immediately.

"Fred, I'm in love with George." He stared at her for a second and then started laughing.

"You should probably explain everything before I commit any more blunders. Although it will be fun to tell George that I've kissed his girlfriend." He had an impish look on his face and Elizabeth knew that this was going to be trouble. She started pacing the floor, wondering where she should start her explanation. Fred sat down on one of the two beds in the room and relaxed, watching her. Finally, she began.

"You were supposed to die in the Battle of Hogwarts."

"Yes, I guessed as much when I woke up in a coffin in my own grave." She smiled.

"Originally, you did die and it's been over four years since you died."

"You let me lay in that coffin for four years?"

"Oh, no. I got you out just after your funeral, after everyone had gone." He looked confused. "I'm not explaining this very well. Let me try again. Fred, do you remember when I told you that you and George were my favorite characters in some books that I love?" He nodded. She pulled out the final Harry Potter book, which she had shrunk and stuck in her pocket. She returned it to its usual size and showed it to Fred. "This is the last book of the series that talks about you."

"This says Harry Potter. Are you trying to tell me that George and I weren't the main characters of your books? They should have followed us." He joked.

"George said the same thing." She laughed. "Anyway, in this last book, you die. And the world of this book is real, as you well know. Even though the book ends, mostly, with the Battle of Hogwarts, everyone continues on with their lives, meaning that George had to deal with your death. He tried, for a couple of years, but he wasn't getting over it. And all of your family could tell that he wasn't getting over it." Fred looked troubled by what Elizabeth was telling him.

"No, I can only imagine how I would have felt if I had been in his shoes." He looked up at her and for the first time she could see a real difference in his face as opposed to George's face. Fred's face was more innocent, more childlike than George's, and Elizabeth knew that it was because of what George had lived through without Fred.

"Well, after a couple of years, Hermione handed him a book. It was about a girl witnessing the death of her best friend and what she learns from the death."

"A book wouldn't help George." Fred asserted.

"Actually, I think that it did, though not in the way Hermione intended. You see, once he had read the book, he decided that he had to do something about the ending. It wasn't right that someone should lose someone important to them just to learn a lesson. So, he decided to change it." Fred laughed.

"That's more like George. Did he talk to the author and demand it be changed?"

"Oh no, nothing so easy. He can explain his thought process to you himself later. All I can tell you right now is that he decided to go into the book and try to change it himself. It took him a while, but he found a way to jump into the book and talk to the character who dies and explain to her that he wanted to change her ending." Fred roared with laughter.

"Of course he did! I bet she had quite a shock, did she?"

"Yes, she did." Elizabeth said quietly. The way she said it stopped Fred's laughter and he looked at her closely.

"It was you?" She nodded. "George changed your ending and kept you alive?" Now instead of laughter, Fred looked awed.

"Yes. We're actually in my reality right now. And in my reality, there is no magic. We read about it in books. It's a long story that I won't go into right now, but I will say that George helped me to change my ending and discovered that I had the ability to do magic and he brought me to his reality where I've been learning as much as I can. I think I've nearly caught up to most students who attend Hogwarts. And once I learned enough magic, I decided that I had to repay George for saving my life. I read and reread the chapter where you died and decided that I was going to try to keep you alive, but it had to be done in a very specific way. I had to keep up the appearance of your death. If George knew that you were really alive, he wouldn't have read my book for solace, wouldn't have come to my world to save me, I would have died and I wouldn't have been able to come and save you."

"That's a bit complicated."

"It is, but what it amounts to is that George has been mourning your death for four years and you just lost four years of your life. Either that or you're now four years younger than George. I'm not sure which."

"If I'm four years younger, does that mean that we're not twins anymore?"

"This is making my head hurt. You and George can argue about it when you see each other."

"It's a deal. I can't believe that you were able to do all of this yourself. How long did you say you'd been studying magic?"

"Oh, around a year or so. But I had to do it myself. I think I'm the only one who would have been able to jump into your book the way I did because I come from this reality and not from that one. Time always marches on for me in this reality no matter what I'm doing in the other, just as time marches on for George in his reality but he could jump around in time in this one. But, again, that's something that makes my head hurt just thinking about."

"Okay, I suppose that all makes sense. When are we going back?"

"I've got to go see my parents before I can go back. They think that I'm in China teaching English and I haven't seen them in over a year. You can try to go back now, but I don't know if it will work for you. There's a lot about this jumping around in timelines that I don't understand."

"Perhaps it would be best if I waited for you, just in case. When are we going to see your parents?"

"We?"

"I can't just stay here in this depressingly small and dingy hotel room while you're out and about."

"Hey, I have to save money, I don't get paid very much. Believe it or not, an assistant in your shop doesn't make a lot." She was teasing him, but was serious that she was low on funds.

"You work for George?" He laughed.

"Yes, George wanted me in his world so much that he was willing to give me a job even though when he hired me I didn't know any magic at all. However, perhaps you could talk him into giving me a raise. I did save your life after all." She grinned at him.

"I'll have to talk that one over with George. I can't tell him to give you a raise if you're not very good at your job." She knew that he was joking, but she was also a little miffed.

"I can always jump back into your book and stop myself from helping you, Mr. Joker." He laughed.

"Okay, okay, a raise will be coming your way. So, when are we going?"

"Let's go to Guam tomorrow and then we can head back to your world."

"Guam?"

"It's where my parents are." She said as she laid herself down on one of the beds. The past few days had been long and tiring. She need sleep badly. She closed her eyes and listened to Fred move around the room as she fell asleep. He probably wasn't tired.

She woke up to the sun shining through the curtains. She sat up and looked around and immediately saw that Fred wasn't in the room. She wondered where he had gone. He was an adult, so she knew that she shouldn't be worried about him, but he had never been in her world before. What could he possibly be doing? She didn't have to worry for long. He came through the door just a few minutes later and he had some doughnuts.

"Hello! You're quite a deep sleeper, you know."

"Yes, I know. How did you get those?" She asked, her stomach rumbling.

"I picked your pocket." He told her. She patted her pockets and noted that, yes, they did feel lighter. She rolled her eyes at him but took a doughnut. She dug around in her bag and pulled out a change of clothes for herself and clothes she had stolen for him from George and went to have a shower.

She came out and started to get ready to leave. She put all her things in her bag and as she was getting ready to zip it up, Fred handed her the final Harry Potter book. She looked up at him, concerned.

"Fred, did you read this?" He nodded. "There's a lot in that book that I'm not sure Harry would want to have shared."

"Agreed. I had some questions about what happened after I died. I didn't know it would have so much more in it." He looked grave.

"You'll keep your knowledge to yourself?"

"Yes."

"And could you please stop searching my things when I'm not aware?" She raised an eyebrow at him and he laughed.

"Sure. I think I made it through everything anyway."

Elizabeth took his arm and they apparated to her parents' house. The two of them knocked on the door without any sort of warning and her mother opened it and squealed with delight at seeing her.

"Hi mom!"

"Lizzy! I didn't know you were coming! Why didn't you tell me?"

"I didn't know myself until I booked the flight back to America and I saw there was going to be a layover here. I've got a few hours!" She wasn't comfortable lying to her mother, but she knew that she had to keep up appearances if she was going to continue to live in George's world. She ushered them into the house.

"And who is this?" She asked indicating Fred.

"I'm George, her boyfriend." He said, taking her hand and kissing it. Elizabeth wanted to poke him in the ribs to get him to stop, but he maneuvered around so that he wasn't close enough for her to get. "I can see where Elizabeth gets her stunning good looks." He wiggled his eyebrows at Elizabeth, who glared at him.

"Oh my. Well, thank you! I'm afraid Elizabeth hasn't told us anything about you, but it is a pleasure to meet you."

"I told you when I left that it was going to be hard to communicate." Elizabeth told her.

"Well, I've heard a lot about you, Mrs.…" Fred realized that he had no idea what Elizabeth's last name was.

"Fairchild." Elizabeth hissed in his ear.

"Fairchild! Of course! Not that it will matter for long. Some names are made to be changed, am I right?" He put his arm around Elizabeth and gave her a little squeeze. Elizabeth's mother stared at the two of them.

"What's going on here?"

"Nothing mom, George just thinks he's funny." Elizabeth said rolling her eyes. "Perhaps he's seen too many romantic comedies." He looked at her questioningly, but she just shook her head. Her mom laughed.

"Okay, well, I'm glad that Elizabeth found someone with a sense of humor."

They sat and talked for a while, Fred pretending to be George but he stopped laying it on so thick. He did, however, sit close to her and hold her hand while they were there. She tried to pull away a couple of times, but he didn't let her. Finally, Elizabeth claimed that they had to get back to the airport to catch their flight. Elizabeth's mother hugged them both and sent them on their way.

"Well that was fun." Fred commented as they walked far enough to pretend to hail a cab.

"Maybe for you. What was that all about?"

"I had to explain my presence somehow. And after all, I do look like George, and you are with George. I thought my actions were the obvious solution."

"Well, thanks very much for that. It's a good thing that we're apparating away, she won't be able to question me about your odd behavior." He laughed and grabbed her hand.

"Speaking of apparating away, let's go home." They had walked to an alley that was empty and out of sight. Elizabeth dug through her bag and pulled out the potion. They both swallowed some and Elizabeth took them to just outside her house into the world that she had been living for the past year. They went inside, where Elizabeth had to sit quickly or risk throwing up. She wasn't sure why she felt so terrible after that long apparition when she had to do it in quick succession. Neither George nor Fred seemed to be affected the way she was.

"This doesn't look like the shop." Fred noted.

"No, I think I better break this to George easily. Let me contact him first and let him know I'm coming and then we'll go."

She took a pinch of floo powder, threw it into the fire and put her head in and looked around.

"George." She called out. She could hear footsteps and soon George was in view.

"You're back!" He looked very happy to see her.

"Yes, I'm back. I'd like to come see you if you're not busy. I need to talk to you."

"I will make myself available for you. Why don't you just come right now?"

"I need a little bit to recover. Apparating that way made me feel a little sick."

"Okay, take your time, but don't take your time. I want to see you." She smiled.

"Okay. I'll be there in a half an hour or so."

"Great!"

She pulled her head back out of the fire and sat down on her sofa and closed her eyes. She could hear Fred shuffling around her house looking at things.

"That's a lot of books." He said, noting her bookshelf.

"I know. I studied literature in college."

"You went to muggle university?"

"I did. I did everything muggle until about a year ago."

"I'm afraid your muggle degree won't get you a job in our world." He joked.

"It won't get me one in mine, either." She wished she was joking.

"Can we go yet? I haven't seen George in days, and he hasn't seen me in years."

"I need just a little time to recover, unless you want me to vomit all over you." He pretended to think it over.

"Okay, fine."

*Direct quote taken from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows


	13. You Shouldn't Have

After Elizabeth felt like she could move around without being sick, she stood up and they apparated to the joke shop. Fred looked around curiously as they walked through, noting the changes that had been made in the four years he had missed out on. When they got to the door of the flat, Elizabeth stopped him.

"I think I had better go in and prepare him a little bit. He's been through a lot and I want to break it to him easy." Fred was about to protest but Elizabeth stopped him. "I know you think it will be okay, and maybe it will, but just humor me, okay?"

"Okay." Fred rolled his eyes, but he stepped back when she knocked on the door. George opened and yanked her inside where she was greeted by dozens of people all screaming "Welcome Home!" to her. She was stunned as music started playing and people greeted her.

"Oh, no." She thought. How was she going to tell George that Fred was waiting outside for him? Fred solved the problem himself, though definitely not the way Elizabeth had wanted him to. He burst into the room.

"A party for me? You shouldn't have." He said, looking around.

The music instantly died. Everyone in the room went quiet. And George dropped to his knees.

Elizabeth knelt down next to George and put her hand on his shoulder, but George didn't even notice. He stared at Fred. Fred walked over to him and also knelt down.

"You okay, Georgie?" He asked his twin. George grabbed him into a hug and began weeping.

Elizabeth looked around and noticed that Ginny and Hermione had tears running down their faces, as did most of the other people in the room. Ron was staring at his brothers and Harry, well, Harry was looking at Elizabeth with a look of awe and something else on his face. She nodded at him once and he began quietly ushering people out of the room. Everyone left quietly while George and Fred continued to hug. Soon it was just Ginny and Harry, Ron and Hermione, and Elizabeth left. They all had a chance to hug Fred, to see that he was real and everyone hugged Elizabeth to thank her. There was a lot of crying and plenty of jokes from Fred about how much they had all changed. Then Ginny looked at George and knew that he needed some time with Fred.

"Why don't we all come back here tomorrow. I think we'd all like an explanation, but this probably isn't the best time for that." Ginny said. They all nodded and headed out the door.

Elizabeth was the last one out and as she was shutting the door, it was pulled from her hand and she was pulled back inside.

"Oh no you don't, you're staying right here." George told her and he held her hand as he walked her to the sofa. Fred chuckled. "How did you do this?" He asked her, his voice filled with awe.

"I went to his world and told him that he and his twin brother were my favorite characters in some books that I loved and that I wanted to change his ending." She teased him. He laughed, recognizing the words that he had said to her when they had first met. "Fred was by far less skeptical than I was." She teased.

"I didn't believe her at first, I just went along with it because she's so pretty." Fred joked. George laughed. He was laughing a lot. He looked giddy now that the shock had worn off a little.

Elizabeth told him the whole story of what she had done, starting with making the draught of living death ("but that's really advanced potion work! How did you learn to do that in only a year?") and then the Wiggenweld potion ("you know, in the stories, the hero puts the potion on his lips to waken the sleeper with a kiss. I'm disappointed in the way I woke up, Miss Fairchild") and then on to what had happened once she apparated herself into the book.

She told George how she had lived in Amycus Carrow's house for weeks waiting to see Fred, how she talked him into doing as she asked and swallowing the potion, and how she had moved Fred over out of the spot where he had originally died just as everything around her exploded.

"How did you manage to make it out of there without being hurt if everything exploded?" George asked her.

"Oh, I didn't walk away unscathed." He raised an eyebrow and she showed him where she had been injured. There was a scar that intersected with her scar from her teenage years. George touched it gently.

"Where did that other scar come from?" Fred asked her. She smiled.

"That is a story for another time. We're talking about you right now."

"I'm sorry you were hurt." George said, looking upset that he hadn't been there to help her.

"Don't be. I like this." She said pointing to the two scars on her side. "One scar is there to remind me that I did something stupid and to remind me to do better, and the other is now there to remind me that I have done something great and I have changed for the better."

George smiled and was about to say something, but Elizabeth kept going with her story.

She told George how she had stalked Fred's body until it was buried, worried that someone would do something to it and kill him in the process of making sure he was dead. Once she got to the part where Fred woke, Fred had to add his voice to Elizabeth's story.

"You should put this back where it belongs." Fred told George handing him back the wand that George had left on his headstone. "I'm sorry you had to go through that." He said seriously, his eyes searching George's face. For just a moment, that tired look came back to George's face as he remembered how he felt putting the wand there. Then his whole visage brightened. He got up and crossed the room to an empty frame hanging on the wall. He put the wand in the center of the frame and then returned to his seat and looked it over contentedly.

"What is that?" Elizabeth asked. She had been curious about it from the moment she saw George leave it.

"It's the first joke the two of us made together when we decided to start a joke shop. We argued about what to do with it, George said that he wanted keep it and I told him he could keep it 'over my dead body'. So we decided to hang it there." Fred explained. Tears came to Elizabeth's eyes and she nodded showing that she understood before she composed herself and was able to continue.

Once the story was over, George began filling Fred in on changes that had happened since he had seen Fred last. Before long Fred and George were bantering between themselves as though they had never been apart. After some time, Elizabeth told them that she needed some sleep and she got up to leave. George got up with her and kissed her before she left. It was long and passionate and Fred had to cough to remind the two of them that he was still in the room. Elizabeth pulled away and George hugged her to him.

"Thank you." He whispered in her ear.

"Now we're even." She whispered back. "I probably won't be in to work tomorrow, Boss. I need to catch up on some sleep." She winked at him. She could hear him laughing as she apparated away.

And she did sleep. She woke up much later than she normally would have feeling rested and happy. She got up and chose a book from the bookshelf and lay back down in her bed to read, reveling in the freedom of having nothing to do. She would get back into her routine of studying magic and work the next day, but at that moment, she wanted to just continue being as relaxed as possible. She vaguely wondered how Fred and George were at that moment, but she wanted to let them catch up with some time to themselves so she didn't think too much about it.

In the late afternoon, Elizabeth had finally gotten dressed and she was cleaning her house up a little when she heard her name coming from the fireplace.

"Elizabeth, what are you doing there? You were supposed to come here and explain things to everyone." It was George.

"I thought that was just for your family. I explained everything to you last night." Another head popped up in the fire, identical to the first.

"But no one can explain things quite like you. Besides, George misses you. You're not supposed to absent yourself from him for long periods of times like this. He'll think that you've fallen in love with me instead."

"Not a chance." She grinned. "Get yourselves out of the fire and I'll be right over." She took a pinch of floo powder and stepped into the fire, going directly to George's flat. She stepped out and was nearly knocked over by a rush of red hair coming at her and hugging her. It was Mrs. Weasley, who was crying and started thanking her.

"Mum! Give her some air." George told her, seeing the look on Elizabeth's face. Mrs. Weasley let her go and Elizabeth had a chance to look around the room. Every Weasley was there, even Charlie, and Fleur, Harry and Hermione and they were all staring at her.

"No pressure, Elizabeth, but everyone would like to know how you brought Fred back."

She told the story for the third time in a week. Mrs. Weasley cried throughout the telling and the others looked impressed. When she had finished her telling, Harry had a question for her.

"Is there any way you could go back and save someone else?" She had wondered if he, or someone else, would ask her this question.

"I don't think so." She answered quietly. "You see, the only reason I thought it might be possible to save Fred's life was because he wasn't killed by dark magic. I didn't have to try to reverse any spells, I didn't have to try and block any spells, and I didn't have to try to fake any spells. It was the explosion that killed him and I just had to move him a couple of feet and use something to make him appear to have died to keep the continuity of the book. Everyone else who died in the book was killed by dark magic, and it can't be changed." She looked at where George's ear should have been. Then she looked back at Harry, who was looking supremely disappointed. "I'm sorry, Harry."

"It's okay, I'm glad that you were able to bring Fred back."

"But that reminds me. There are going to be other people who are going to want to know how Fred came back. Would it be possible to keep the story of how he came back quiet? I don't want to raise any false hopes in others who lost friends and family. They all nodded.

"Sure, I'll just tell everyone that I wasn't dead but in some sort of magical coma. People believe anything if you say it with enough conviction." Fred told her.

After their conversation, Mrs. Weasley had them all over to the Burrow to celebrate Fred.

For the past year, Elizabeth had seen George every day and had seen the funny, charismatic character that she had grown to love from the books, but he had moments of melancholy that always took him time to shake off. With Fred back, that melancholy was gone. There were no moments of darkness, that tired look she had seen on his face whenever he thought of Fred had disappeared. And when the two of them were together, well, it was just as she had imagined.

Once Elizabeth returned to her normal routine, the bookshop owner introduced her to someone from Whizz Hard books. The publisher had stopped by the book shop while she had been away and heard all about her list of recommendations and their book club and he was curious about her. They talked for a while and he offered her a job with his company. It was exactly what she wanted, so she accepted at once. George wouldn't need her at the shop now that Fred was back anyway.

One evening George and Elizabeth were out together. He took her to the ice cream shop in Diagon Alley where they had first gone when George had brought her to his world.

"Fred told me that he was able to meet your mum while you were gone." Elizabeth laughed.

"I forgot about that. Did he tell you how he besmirched your good name by acting like a crazy person?"

"He did. I have to say that I'm a little offended that you let Fred meet her and not me." He was teasing her, of course. He now knew why he hadn't been invited.

"I promise that I won't let Fred masquerade as you in front of my family again." She teased back. "Maybe next time Ron can come instead."

"Hey!" She laughed. "You don't think your mum will be interested in meeting the real me?" He asked her.

"She'd probably love it, but she doesn't know that it wasn't the real you. Of course, if she had been paying a little more attention, she would have realized that Fred wasn't real at all. She's read those books, too, you know."

"I imagine she didn't entertain the idea, just as you wouldn't when we first met. It's hard to admit that you're a fictional character. How long did it take you to acknowledge that I might be right?"

"I still haven't admitted it." She grinned.

"Well, if you won't admit that you've come into the world of reality, how are you going to acknowledge that this is real?" He pulled out a little blue box and opened it for her to look at. It was a ring. George got up out of his chair and knelt in front of her.

"Elizabeth, there are no words to describe what you mean to me. When I lost Fred, I wasn't sure if there was anything that could bring a smile to my face again. I walked around pretending for years before Hermione gave me your book and I read about this amazing person who brought a smile to nearly everyone, and I smiled as I read it, until you died. I knew that I was going to have to save you somehow so that I wouldn't have to go back to pretending. I thought I would be content saving the ending of your book and knowing that happiness was still out there in the world somewhere, but after meeting you, it didn't take me five minutes to know that that wasn't going to be enough. I wanted you near me. And I haven't had to go back to pretending. You still make me smile, now more than I ever thought possible because of what you've done for me. I need that kind of happiness in my life, always. Please marry me."

"Are you sure you want to marry a fictional character?" She couldn't help herself. He laughed.

"And there it is. Yes, I'm sure."

"Then yes." The entire ice cream shop erupted in cheering. Elizabeth looked around and saw that everyone present was a friend. Somehow, she hadn't noticed before. George and Elizabeth accepted congratulations from the people she had read about for years, the people who had become friends when she had jumped into this world of fantasy. It now felt more real than she had imagined possible.

Fred was the last one to come up and congratulate them. The three of them hugged for a long time and while they were hugging, Elizabeth looked up and around all the people who were there to celebrate with them. She spotted someone in the corner who looked familiar but she couldn't quite place right away. Then it hit her. It was _her_. The Author. She had a quill and some parchment and was writing something. Then, she looked up, looked Elizabeth in the eye and winked.


End file.
